Promotion!

Who just got promoted?
That's right.
ME!
Level THREE like it ain't no thang!
WOOOOO!

On Friday I will ask about schedules and such. With luck I can start going to one level 1-2 and one level 3 class next week. If I am not so lucky it will have to wait until September, but I am feeling pretty chuffed one way or the other.
Also SCARED TO DEATH!
NOOOOOOOoooooo! I still feel like the world is out to get me when I hit a particularly long stretch of fondues and I can't hook chaînés turns together quickly while still being able to spot my way out of a hole. And what about balancing? I feel like I am total rubbish at balancing. So I will give this a shot but I MIGHT DIE, GUYS.

In reality, when I look at where I started last September (in the very worst physical condition of my life) I am pretty impressed with myself in spite of everything.

The future is here, it's bright, it's now.
(That was a Regina Spektor reference. In case you were lost, there. Sorry. That is what happens in my brain, sometimes.)

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.)

Doctor's Appointment: Preparation

Well, I have an appointment with my primary care doctor this week. There are a couple of things I want to discuss with him, and the biggest is (probably quite obviously) my knees. I have learned from a lifetime of Kaiser's brand of medical care, and so I am spending a little time tonight brushing up on my anatomy and such. Seriously guys, patients should not have to do this. I am capable of it, you are probably capable of it, but some people aren't. And those people will just slip through the cracks in the system. It's rather frustrating.
Anyhow, I have discovered (this was a huge surprise to me, though it really shouldn't have been) that tendonitis can be caused by rheumatism. I don't know why it didn't occur to me before. Rheumatism equals inflammation, and tendonitis is definitely based on that same mechanism.
Anyway, the good news is that I have some ammunition to take to my appointment, as well as a ten month record of trying and failing the regular first-line treatment. So, maybe I will get some suggestions?
I have very little faith in the medical establishment right now.

Ow. TMI alert, but I am hurting a lot right now, in my feminine regions. The timing is all wonky and totally wrong which means I am probably just having a bout of mittelschmerz, which I have experienced off and on since I was a teenager. It's been more off than on since my mid twenties but it used to be clockwork-regular. It occurs to me, at this late hour, that mittelschmerz is an inflammatory condition of unknown origin. Just like every other damn thing that is wrong with me. Why don't doctors look at the big picture and tally up all these things once in a while?

Sigh...

Anyway. No feeling sorry for myself! I have a new ballet classmate with artificial hips! Talk about moxie!

For One Thing it Won't Fit Over My Diaper.

If a grown-up is wearing it it is a leotard. Or a body suit. Or SOMETHING. But it ISN'T a "onesie". I don't wear bunny suits, either, guys!

Here is a onesie, for reference:

 

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.

Two Posts in One

I have been stuck using the portable barres at the studio, lately (which is a story that involves me being annoyed with someone else for not understanding ballet etiquette, and this story is SO bitchy that I am refraining from telling it) which is irksome because a) sometimes there isn't quite enough space on them so you get stuck hanging over the end or trying not to grab on to the hand of the person on the opposite side, b) sometimes they get set up sort of wonky so that they aren't at a 90* angle to the mirror (or the seams in the floor) so I spend the entire time feeling off-center, and c) they are metal so I create a loud CLANG! every time my left hand touches the barre. Either I am just super-conscious of my own clanging or no one else is having this problem. This is grown-up class! Where are your wedding rings? I am not dissing anyone who takes theirs off, it's just that I am lazy and forgetful and so I basically never remove mine. In the bath tub, doing dishes, digging around in the garden, changing the oil in my scooter, baking bread... whatever. There are reasons I do not wear fancy diamond things with bits all sticking out.
ANYWAY.

 Cemeteries are one of my great passions (I have a lot of great passions, okay?) and in the world of Pinterest I recently discovered this photograph:

Which claims to be the grave of Marie Taglioni in the Montmartre cemetery. And I thought : "OOOH AWESOME!" It's kind of gross but also very beautiful. It's become a sort of shrine for dancers, the pile of decomposing shoes an offering to the memory of the first famous modern ballet dancer. Definitely something to see someday, a pilgrimage site for the future.
But, I was intrigued enough to do some research online and discovered that there is some confusion about this particular grave site. It actually isn't Marie Taglioni's grave, but the grave of her mother (who was a dancer, though not the kind of celebrity her daughter became). So... all those shoes are in the wrong cemetery. In fact, Marie Taglioni's actual grave is in the Père-Lachaise cemetery (where all sorts of other famous dead people reside). Here is an article but it's all in French. My own French is pretty rusty but I can work out the general gist of it.
This is what Marie Taglioni's actual grave looks like:

Much less dramatic but at least there are some shoes up there! If I ever visit France I would definitely make this a destination and add a shoe to the site.
The downside to living in the western US is that our history goes back about 150-200 years and then drops straight off. We have some really interesting cemetery history, but it's nothing like the incredible history of Europe's cemeteries.

god save the queen

So, who else thinks that Queen Elizabeth II is awesome? And how many of you are like "Woot! Diamond jubilee! There will be big hats!" or is it just me?
One of the things that HM did for the occasion is release the complete digitized collection of Queen Victoria's rather exacting private journals. If you are in to that stuff you can check 'em out right here.
So anyway, I've been reading them here and there when something in particular grabs my attention (though, to be honest, her handwriting is pretty taxing) and eagerly waiting for any mention of the big exciting news that was the world of ballet in the early to mid 1800s. I was hoping there would be some written mention, but instead we all lucked out, because she was an artist:

 

Pauline Duvernay in Sleeping Beauty. March 12th, 1833

 “The Viennoises”, at Her Majesty's Theatre in the Haymarket. 1845

And, of course, the ballerina who will live forever, Taglioni:

 

Marie Taglioni as La Bayadère, 1832

 

"Mlle taglioni as she appeared in the ballet of Le Pouvoir de la Danse, ou la Nouvelle Terpsichore" 

1834 

And closer because it's prettier that way:

'Taglioni danced quite exquisitely', wrote Victoria, ' … she positively almost flew'