In Hell You Probably Have to Wear Brand New Pointe Shoes ALL THE TIME

Two months. That's how long it's been since I posted. Everyone else has stopped posting, too, so... I guess I'm just a follower? Honestly, I just haven't been compelled. It's hard to feel inspired when you A) have been writing about the same subject for four years, and B) get very little feedback except from your parents.
I hate when bloggers come back after a hiatus and say "oh boy, guys! I am totally going to start posting twice a week and it's gonna be amazing!" and then you never hear from them again. So lame. So, I am not doing that. Will I be posting in the future? Meh. Maybe? There are a lot of posts I never got around to writing but always wanted to. Like advice for what to wear to your first ballet class and the reality that the most "perfect" ballet body is not usually the one in class that is blowing us all out of the water with bitchin' technique and grace. But will those posts get written? I leave that for fate to decide.
If you've followed this far, I thank you kindly.

Teeny Trina

I recently received a message from Oshini, the owner of a small ballet-inspired greeting card company, asking me to plug her site on the RPrin blog. While I don't usually do this sort of thing, I am a small business owner myself. I know how hard it is to get the word out, especially to a receptive audience. My own fabulous contributions to the world of art are not exactly soaring out of my sewing studio, you know? Anyway, I took a look at her work, and it's pretty cool. Super cute illustrations, like This Valentine's Day card. It's all of us, am I right?

I am also particularly fond of her ballet alphabet, which would make an adorable poster or t-shirt design, right guys? I would wear this on a tank top in the summertime, for sure. You know, just an idea for the future (hint hint):

And this is her:

I mean, damn. Anyway, give her site a look, in support of dancers and artists and small business owners and all that jazz.

Blog Maintenance and Life Update

I've gone through and added some new related blogs, and removed a few that haven't been active within the last six months +. If you are one of the people I dropped, never fear! If you post again I'll pop you back in to the blogroll. I'm just trying to keep it tidy up in here, up in here.

The studio is closing in on it's recital (just a couple more weeks and then I get to take pointe class without running through Swan Lake like a million times. Hallelujah!) and I am down to the wire on a few remaining costume things that need finishing up. Just embellishing the Firebird's leotard and whipping up two more little peasant bodices for the kids (six total, I think). I will be extremely thankful when it's over and I can reclaim my sewing room. You can't even walk in there, it's ridiculous (tutus, man, they take up a lot of space).
To add a little extra to my plate (because I totally needed that) my summer work schedule has just kicked in. So, now my days off are rare and precious and the arthritis in my hands is going to need a lot of babying. Right now I am building a new show, so basically I work 8 hours a day making bodices and then I come home and... make bodices. I am going to be pretty tired of bodices by the end of this week, let me tell you.

Here is the Firebird's tutu embellishment, done and out of my life. sadly you will just have to believe me when I say it has lots of texture and looks interesting in motion:

Oh man, guys. I wanted to bedazzle this thing SO BAD. I had to stop myself with sequins in hand TWICE. It just... it just needs glitter. It does. Everything needs glitter, guys.

I'm making fun of you guys.

real search terms that direct to this blog, guys.

Liebster Post. Finally.

Okay, okay. I will finally post this Leibster award entry before anyone else can nominate me and thereby give me more questions to answer!
Here is how it works: A blogger "nominates" you and you have to give 11 random facts about yourself, answer 11 questions given to you by the blogger, and nominate another 11 blogs (that have fewer than 200 followers). While I am far too lazy and mainstream to actually have a list of 11 up-and-coming young blogs to link you to, I will at least give you 11 blogs to check out, that (as far as I know) have not been Liebstered yet. Thank you to Mercie et Chatons, Barre Barre Black Sheep, and The Traveling Dancer for the nominations and questions (the rest of you may skip this ridiculously long post if you want, I won't judge):
 
11 random facts about me:

1) If I could only eat one type of meal for the rest of my life it would be fresh fruit and french bread with butter. But if I could only eat one THING it would be raspberries.
2) I honestly do not care which way round the toilet paper is facing. For heaven's sake, why do people get so uptight about it?
3) The topper on my wedding cake was a black Dalek and a white Dalek.
4) I can float well enough to stay alive, but I never learned to swim.
5) I have no problem with creepy crawlies and have been known to gently nudge a rattlesnake with a stick to get it off the road, but I will NOT touch cockroaches and I will only take horn worms off my tomato plants via the "clip off the entire branch they are sitting on and throw it over the fence" method (but that is mostly because they make that awful noise! SO GROSS!).
6) I can juggle. I taught myself from a book when I was a teenager. It impresses the hell out of people and hey! Party trick!
7) Except in cases of unusual or extreme circumstance (camping, staying at someone's house, hotel, new apartment that I haven't had a chance to clean thoroughly yet...) I only take baths, never showers. I HATE showers. They make me feel cold and you have to go through all sorts of contortions just to wash all your bits. Forget that.
8) I have nearly no sense of direction. I still need a GPS to get to ballet class if I take the freeway instead of surface streets. I can get home just fine, however.
9) My middle name is Marie, after Marie Curie. Back when I was working retail I once wore a T-shirt with Marie Curie on it and a customer asked me if she was "that famous hooker" (tangentially, my sister was named after a botanist. Sadly, neither of us pursued science. We are both artists. Sorry, Mom!)
10) I wrote two novels when I was a teenager. They are both so bad I shudder to think of them ever being read by another human being.
11) My favorite bands of all time are They Might Be Giants and the Magnetic Fields. But I am pretty sure I'm not a hipster because I never do anything ironically.

from Merci et Chatons:

1. If you could ride any animal fictional/dead/alive what would it be? A velociraptor. Obviously. I would keep him in my yard and paint his talons with sparkly nail polish and he could eat intruders. I would ride him to work and I would never be stuck in traffic again.
2. If money was no problem, where would you vacation in the world first? Well, it's not an exotic dream locale, but I would like to just explore up and down the coast of California for a while, then up through Washington and Oregon. Eventually I would like to visit England/Scotland, Switzerland, and Sweden.
3. Do you like sparkly things? Who doesn't like sparkly things? I mean, come on.
4. Can and will you draw me a picture? I'm on my laptop right now, so sorry. 
5. If you have to fart in public how do you go about doing it? a) crop dust b) go into seclusion c) blame it on the innocent. I didn't realize these were all such carefully planned options. I guess just hope no one notices?
6. If sharks could talk, like in Finding Nemo, and you only got one question, what would it be? I don't really have any deep personal questions I need to explore with a shark, really. And I am pretty shy, so it would probably be something like "hey. Nice weather we're having?"
7. If you were asked to perform a dance in space, would you? I was actually just thinking about this while reading Packing For Mars, (which is a pretty interesting book, actually, and not nearly the epic drag you might expect from the description.) And I was thinking about how, in zero gravity (or the approximation of zero gravity as induced via freefall) all your muscles would have to work in very different ways. You could finally achieve that glorious extension, because you wouldn't have to work so hard just to hold it up there. Of course, there are some really interesting possibilities with tippy toes and graceful launching of oneself off of stationary objects. But also, even a regular person's body gets pretty jacked up in space, and I imagine that a dancer's body would be doubly so. Luckily, if the trip was a short one it wouldn't be too much of a long-term problem, but otherwise we are talking possibly irreversible bone damage (not to mention exposure to much higher levels of radiation than you might think). And then I read that they don't take showers up there, they just use moisty wipes. And then I said never mind.
8. What are your favorite barre/floor combinations? We usually don't do combinations more than a time or two before switching to something else, but since the class is working on recital stuff right now we've got a few routines. The bit from Les Sylphides is probably my favorite, but mostly because the Raymonda thing requires a partner and my partner and I keep shocking each other whenever we touch. ZAP!
9. If you could slap a celebrity for their idiocy, which one(s)? Jim Carrey and Jenny McWhatserface. Mostly for their outrageous and ill-informed anti-vaccination crusade. Seriously, people, celebrities are not doctors. Do NOT listen to them.
10. Salad dressing on or on the side? Side. Because I don't like very much of it.
11. Glass half full or empty? Half broken.

From the Traveling Dancer:

1. What is your best recommendation for new bloggers? Find a theme and stick to it. You'll be amazed how many topics you can cover in the course of exploring your theme. Also? You have to choose a theme that you WANT to write about. That you will write about regardless of whether or not anyone else bothers to read it. Your blog should, first and foremost, be for you.
2. If you could live anywhere in the world where would it be? Mendocino, CA. Does that sound horribly boring? Because it probably is. But, I love it there and spend a week there every year. On the other hand, I am pretty sure that moving away from my ballet studio would be traumatic, and there aren't any really amazing ones down in that area if my internet research isn't steering me wrong.
3. What types of posts and blogs do you tend to comment on the most? Ones that I actually have something to say about.
4. Favorite youtube dance clip? Definitely the parotia bird.
5. Would you give up your day job to dance? Professionally? No, I know what a professional dancer's life is like, and I wouldn't be interested in that so much these days.
6. What is your favorite dance studio? The unassumingly named Ballet Studio.
7. Do you like being corrected in class/what type of corrections work best for you? Hells yes! You won't improve if no one corrects you! Gentle physical manipulation is good (note: not running behind me shoving me forward or grabbing my leg and hiking it up waaaay past my ability to actually hold it in place. Both of which I have experienced from some teachers) and spoken explanations are also good. Even just standing next to me and demonstrating.
8. Favorite book? Favorite quote? I read a lot so I can't really pick out just one. My favorite series are the Discworld books by Terry Pratchett, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, and Diane Duane's Young Wizards novels. I have a particular fondness for classics, as well as fun and fluffy books that do not follow the "modern lit" template of a deeply unlikable main character and an awkward sex scene that serves no purpose within the plot. Favorite quote: always changing. 
9. Best snack between class? Peanut butter toast with honey. Plus lots of water.
10. What’s your favorite leotard? (brand, style, color) totally not any of the ones I actually own right now. I am really drawn to the ones with mesh or lace bits, but I can't stand the kind that have super open backs. And I prefer black, because I am boring.
11. Best advice you wish would have known when you were younger? It doesn't matter. Seriously. Let it go. No one will be less proud of you. (I'm still working on that, though)

And last but not least, the questions from Barre Barre Black Sheep:

1. What do you hope to get out of blogging? I created this blog as a way to continue writing non-fiction prose (which is one of my great loves) after my regular personal blog at LiveJournal.com basically went under. Everyone abandoned ship to Facebook. At the time the only things I really wanted to write about were my health problems and my new ballet class, so that is what I did here! I eventually went back to my personal blog, as well. Mostly for bitching about stuff.
2. What is your dream job? I would like to do exactly what I am doing now, only it sure would be nice if people would give me money for it.
3. Do you bulk-blog and schedule the posts, or do you post as you write? Sometimes I write more than one post in a day so I schedule the second one to kick in a day or two later. I often start writing something three or four times and let it default in to my drafts folder before I actually figure out what it is I am trying to say and how I would like to communicate that.
4. What three words would your best friend use to describe you on your best day? My best friend is delusional. She thinks I have my shit together in a way that I most decidedly do not. She would say that I am cool and wise and funny or something... and I so am not those things.
5. What is the one thing you want to improve on before the end of 2013? I would like to improve my productivity. HOWEVER, my shop business has been painfully slow over the past few months, so I am taking a bit of a break right now. There is no use making all this stuff if no one is buying it, right? It's all very frustrating.
6. What's your biggest regret in life? I do not regret choices I've made or things I have done. I do not regret people I have loved or places I've been. My only regrets are my personal reactions and emotional responses to those situations.
7. What do you think is the best way to increase readership of your blog? Reading other people's blogs and commenting in useful and thoughtful ways. Don't just go to someone's blog and leave a totally unrelated post comment saying "visit my blog to see what I wrote about cat food, today!" That annoys the hell out of me.
8. What caused you to start blogging? My first blogging experience was with my personal blog. I started it as a way to connect with people during a particularly painful and difficult phase in my life.
9. I'm obviously a fan of your blog; have you ever read mine? Just curious. I do! In fact, I just read it, which inspired me to get off my butt and post this before the questions section could become any longer than it already is!
10. What's the best advice you've ever received? My father once told me to never hesitate to apologize.
11. Where do you hope your blog will be one year from now? Oh, just like it is only I'll be telling you all about the amazing craftsman house I just bought and the incredibly lucrative design contract I just signed and, of course, the fabulous new treatment for rheumatism that my doctor's have designed just for me. Haaaaaaa.

Okay, here are my questions for other people, I suspect most of them will not answer, but there you go:

1. What is your musical guilty pleasure?
2. A movie or book you liked but no one else does?
3. A musician/artist/etc that everyone else thinks is amazing but you just don't "get"?
4. Do you read any children's/YA books now that you are a grown up? Which ones and why?
5. What is your favorite board game?
6. You've just inherited 10 million dollars. What do you do?
7. What is your favorite holiday? Season? 
8. What modern amenity or technology could you never live without?
9. What is your snack food of choice?
10. A period in history that you are particularly interested in?
11. You can travel back in time and give your younger self a hug. Would you?

OKAY. Now. For blogs that I "nominate".
To be honest, I don't even know how I would find out the readership numbers of other blogs, so I am just going to pretend that the rules state "nominate 11 blogs you like" rather than "11 blogs with less than 200 readers".
So.
Here are some good blogs, guys (ballet blogs in bold):

1. Linnea's Garden (she's my sister and a botanical illustrator)
2. The Ornamented Being (costuming)
3. Dancing Over The Hill
4. The Offbeat Chronicles of a Tutu With Tea
5. Enchanted Doll (dolly related, do not click if you think dolls are creepy)
6. The Inner Ballerina
7. Little Girls R Better at Designing Heroes Than You
8. Knit Two, Pointe Two, Bake Two Together
9. Fashion in So (Star Trek and fashion)
10. EPBOT (geeks and girly stuff)
11. Leotards and the Buns in Them

Recital Ramblings

My last post (which dealt largely with the topic of cartoon characters from our misspent youth appearing in modern pornography) is now officially my most popular post EVER. Way to go, guys. You people have issues.
I love you anyway, though.
Maybe I should label all my posts "porn" and "gross out" and watch my numbers skyrocket?

But, no. We are here, my friends, to discuss the worlds of ballet and rheumatism and the exciting, sometimes dreadful manner in which they collide.
Out of a horrible pang of guilt at the thought of always refusing to participate in the studio's annual recital (let's face it, honey, even if I wasn't working on weekends this Summer I still wouldn't be signing up) I volunteered to alter and mend (and generally "clean up" and "make pretty", which are the nice terms we use in the professional world when something really heinous crosses our path) the rather elderly and decrepit costumes the ladies (and... possibly a gent. At this point they are considering an en travesti Romeo, because we don't appear to have any dudes available) will be wearing. There is a lot of shattered chiffon and several oddly not-quite-complete bodices going on here. There may well be a few atrocious sequined powder-puff tutus at some point, as well.
We shall see how badly I regret this offer a month from now.

In preparation for said recital tonight we practiced a lot of ballet running. I did well at it, as I generally do with ballet walking. My teacher declared that I must have been practicing but I will let you in on a secret: I haven't been. There is a story behind this, though.
When I was about 14 or 15 my pet cat was hit by a car. She was in terrible condition for a long time afterward. One of her hind legs was dislocated at the hip. The other was mangled so badly that it had pins in it for a while, but in the end it had to be amputated. She needed a lot of serious care while she was recovering, and so I would pick her up and carry her very carefully. I realized that the impact from stepping while holding her was hurting her and so I started to mindfully mimic the way a ballet dancer walks whenever I carried her. Toe first, gentle knee bend, toe first, gentle knee bend. For the rest of her life I was the only person she would allow to carry her.
So, my mad ballet walkin' skillz are entirely thanks to a little grey cat with three legs.
Thank you, baby girl. I miss you.

Challenge Accepted

If nothing else the adult ballet blogging community keeps me motivated (this blog included). I am wretched at self-discipline. I basically have none. I have to trick myself in to keeping up with classes twice a week by paying in advance when I am not thinking about it. Oops! Nope! I already paid! I have to go! So, keeping up with doing pilates once a week and convincing myself to get down on the floor and stretch once a day has been ... well. I won't say it's been a challenge, because that would imply that I've been winning or overcoming or something. Honestly I've been pretty dreadful about it all.
One of the blogs I keep up with is written by an adult dancer who keeps making me feel awfully lazy about not getting my self-improvement on. I'm feeling terribly inspired by her 30 day challenges to herself and so I think I will steal the concept for the next month and attempt to work seriously and with focus on the little and annoying things I really need to improve. Balances and building up strength in my core/ab muscles, feet, and legs. I have been working on it here and there, but I forget about it more often than not. Perhaps having a goal and deadline in sight will encourage me to actually get on with it. There is nothing harder for me than trying to self-motivate for an inarticulate and foggy future purpose.

In ballet class news: we started doing cabrioles. Which is the name of a small model car from the 80s or something, isn't it? My spell checker informs me that, no, it was cabriolet. Well, fine then. Never mind. Cabrioles, on the other hand, are not anything like as easy as you would think. Also: stupidly painful with shin splints! There are days when I just can't figure out why I took up ballet. There is so much jumping! I should have taken a country line dancing class or something...

OKAY YOU KNOW WHAT? NEVER MIND. BALLET IS BEAUTIFUL.

Sigh...

Fun With Statistics

I don't even want to know why "black cat butt plug" is a search term that directs traffic to this blog. I just... don't.

For Serious Guys, No

Have I mentioned that for some reason one of the top google search terms that leads to this blog right now is "balett flats insertion pussy"?
The first thing I thought when I saw that was "uuuuuh, learn to spell, dudes" and the second thing I thought was "I don't know what that means but the only things I can think of are ... uh... never mind" and then I had to think about kittens and rainbows for a while.
Learn to spell, sickos.

Rheumatic Supa-Hoe, Nahmeean Biatch?

I ran the blog through gizoogle because I couldn't resist the temptation. I'm utterly fascinated by what I would sound like if I was writing about ballet and rheumatism through the veil of gangster rap. For one, the blog is now named "Rheumatic Supa-Hoe" which is fantastic. My favorite bit so far is "Yo Ass know dat hyped paintin of Lady Macbeth bustin a chronic dress, biatch?" but I have to admit a certain fondness for "I be frontin cheezy-ass exhaustion, PMS, n' snow, nahmeean, biatch?"

image of an old lady with a bad knee

The search term "image of an old lady with a bad knee" now directs Google users to my site. Not just one but two people (or one person twice?) have visited Rheumatic Princess after searching for the term. Is it Inflamo-Woman? Sigh... I should have known that my claim to fame would someday become the fact that I am ... an old lady with a bad knee. *Pout*
You can see all your referring search terms in the back-end statistics application that Blogger provides. I always check it out. Sometimes it's pretty strange what turns up in there. Some of them are pretty obvious (rheumatism and ballet related searches, even "rubber flamingo" makes sense), some are kind of random ("fly blink"... maybe they were looking for the opening sequence from Aeon Flux?).
Some are downright kinky ( I refuse, I just refuse, to list them here. Let's just say that Princess Leia's... uh... popular, and James Dean pulls in a pretty weird crowd these days.)

I Don't Want To Become An Aggregate Blog Or Anything, But...

Crazy pointe shoe shaped coffin.

I don't think I have ever been more certain that I want to be cremated...

My Humps My Humps My Lady Lumps, As They Say

I was just checking my page stats. Apparently "rheumatology hot booties" is a Google search term that leads to Rheumatic Princess. I am unsure what it implies about my readers, I just thought I would share!

ONE HUNDRED POSTS, BITCHES!

100th post! Woooooo!
Not a lot to say, though, I'm afraid.
The last week or so has been really difficult. My cat was diagnosed with a chronic illness. My husband started a new job while also suffering from an endless migraine. My rheumatism flared up so bad I just wanted to sleep through it but couldn't lay down for very long. I was PMSing, which makes it even better. I got a zillion custom orders all at once (which is nice, don't get me wrong. Those vet bills ain't payin' themselves) so I am working and sewing and attempting to communicate with people all over the country while keeping them all separate (my brain is not an organized place).
My hips are going out. They have been for a while, but I have been trying so hard to ignore it. This weekend was the first time they had been so bad that they were my main focus, though.
So, basically, everything is super crappy all around.
But I am going to class in spite of everything. Next week I am going to take an extra class. The harder one. I am a little nervous about it! My other option is to take the class immediately afterward, which is basically pre-beginning. I suppose it couldn't do me any harm to take it. Or maybe I could just do barre of the harder class? Does it really matter? This Monday we were doing those ridiculously hard chaînés turns again. Even when I try to spot I just get dizzy and need a sit-down. I will get them eventually but until then I look super dorky out there.
Sigh. Chaînés turns. You are not my BFF.

Not fo' pussies, yo!

Of the top 9 Google search terms that direct traffic to this blog 6 are about Princess Leia. One is about Hugh Laurie.
How about them apples?

I'm exhausted today. I don't know why, really. After Friday's class I felt okay. And then Saturday my husband and I went out picking up trash along the river for a little while, which involves walking and hiking up and down inclines. But I didn't feel too bad after that, either. Sunday I managed to not get any sleep (I could blame the fact that we're adjusting my meds again, I could blame the pain that started up in my knee, but really it is because I was on a Pinterest tear. Oh joy! A place to pin all my favorite pictures of shoes and ballerinas! It's like it was made just for me! Sigh.) so I felt kind of awful all day yesterday. And there was this horrible deep ache in my right knee. Worse than usual. But I spent some time giving myself a deep massage in the area that hurt the worst (let me tell you, it's not a soothing massage. It's like finding a spot that hurts and then shoving on it so hard and for so long that you need to go take a lie down. Remarkably, however, it helps.) so I haven't been as bad today.
But class kicked me to the curb. Fondu usually kills me, but this was a remarkably long stretch of fondues. Oh man. KILLER.
And then there were 48 changements. I tried to do them low and as gently as possible.
But Jesus. It's like she's trying to kill us.
Ballet is NOT for pussies.

What the what?

313 page views in the last 9 hours? WHUUUUT? I always sleep through the interesting stuff.
I don't even know where they came from as the referring ip addresses seem to trail in to nowhere. Any-old-who... hello to all of you, where ever you came from!

Sew and Sew

You know the big pink title on my main blog page? The one up there (*gestures up*) that says "Rheumatic Princess"? It can't decide what font it wants to be. Every time I log in it is something new. Mostly it just switches between two fonts, but it is pretty weird. Blogger, WTF?
Anyway.
A couple of days ago I went ahead and whipped up another shorty leotard, exactly the same as the last one. They are pretty fast when you have the pattern down. For people who are curious about that sort of thing, here is what the pattern looks like. It is the style that has seams running down the center front and center back rather than down the sides:

Note: baby got back.

Bloggity Blog Bloggin'

I'd like to take a little moment here to thank all the wonderful ballet blogs that have added Rheumatic Princess to their blogrolls. If you haven't yet, make sure you check out Adult Beginner, 4Dancers, Barre Barre Black Sheep, and Leotards and the Buns in Them.
Also, if you know of any others that I have missed, or if you own one that I didn't mention, let me know! I find it all exciting and lovely, really. And a little embarrassing! But also really cool! Thanks, guys!

Edited to add: Here is another! Thank you, Ballet You Say?

A Shopping Cart In Ballet Slippers

There's a new blog picture ----------->
Check it out!
My best friend asked how I was doing in dance class. And my reply?
"Like a shopping cart in ballet slippers."
 On a related note: do you know that there just aren't any high-res photos of shopping carts out there? Google images brings up several options, but they are all so tiny! I think I may have swiped the shopping cart there from some wholesale distributor. Let's just pretend I got it totally legit. Say nothing, act casual.