Absolutely boring entry #101 - and dancing! With extra bonus game features!

Because, y'all, there is NOTHING to talk about except work.

And maybe the flame-outs that are starting to appear on my forehead from the F-U treatment I'm giving myself.

Oh yeah - Google THAT, internets!

So, because there's nothing for me to talk about in my REAL life (except maybe a lunch date with another blogger tomorrow, about which I get a little bit excited every time I think on it because, well, it's neat!), why don't we take a little trip down memory lane?

Let's see, which bright spot in my past will take center stage today?

Center stage you say? I've been there a time or two, so let's talk about my ballerina phase!

Shut up RI Red and Q and Hovatter62 and Oldfriend and whoever else knows me! I was TOO once a ballerina, and my Mom has the pictures to PROVE it!

Here goes:
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When I was but a wee lass (this was a loooong time ago, friends!) of about 5, my Mom decided that I night like to take dancing lessons, and signed me up for ballet. Because, apparently, my Mom has a warped sense of humor.

In case you don't know, or have never walked alongside me for any length of time (say, about 10 feet), I have a very poor sense of balance, and perhaps this is why my Mother, bless her, thought that I'd benefit from the dance training. That, and my feet flapped out like duck's do as they waddle toward the beach, so I guess if I could say I was a ballerina then it would be OK to walk with my toes out, because that's how they ALL walk, only, you know, with their toes hitting the ground first in a dainty mince and not like I did with the heels slamming down first.

Anyhow, there I was, all of 5 years old and looking much older (BIG runs in the family), in a beginning ballet class, in which we spent about a week learning the proper hand and foot positions and then spending the remainder of the session (something like a year) learning the "routine" that we were to do to showcase our new talents at the recital. We had these little half-hula-hoops covered in spring flowers, and were supposed to be doing some kind of (perhaps Pagan?) dance to Spring, and had to wear itchy pink leotards and our hair in buns, which were 2 particularly heinous tortures foisted in us in the name of grace and beauty.

It should have come as a warning of my future as a dancer that, even with all this coaching and prep time, come recital time I was dependent on the movements of the OTHER girls on stage to tell me what I was supposed to be doing at any given moment, sometimes to mixed results.

Despite this inauspicious beginning, I must have shown either 1) promise or b) interest, because I was signed up for another dance session, with predictably similar results of performance to the first time. THIS time, however, the leotards had little skirts on them (squee!), and they were bedecked with sequins and tulle edging, thereby upping the itch quotient by a factor of a million. We also got to wear pink tights, the direct result of which looked like I was dancing on 2 bratwursts. Not pretty. We did get to wield umbrellas this time (danger Will Robinson!), and twirled them like little sparkly itchy maniacs in the pre-ordained pattern set forth by our dance instructor, with the end result that we reached the conclusion of our piece with very little in the way of injury or bruised emotions to show for it.

I happen to KNOW there's a picture of our dance class from that year in our costumes, positioned on some kind of riser (I think); and I, as the tallest girls in the class, of COURSE got to stand on the tallest riser, thereby lending me the appearance of the girl-who-got-left- behind-a-time-or-two-and-might-actually- be-on-the-short- bus.

There's a word for my stage presence at this time, and that word is "uncomfortable." And maybe "gawky." Plus, "itchy."

Thus endeth my ballet career, whether it was through my insistence or my parents' belated recognition of my complete and utter lack of grace and inability to be trained into it. Mercifully short, as all wrong things should be.

My gait in later years would be termed "trucker" by Mom (see, again with the sense of humor!); the kind of rise-and-fall loping galumph seen all too often on girls who don't know what to do with all their body parts. My Mom would yell "FEET!" at me as a reminder to turn in my toes as I awkwardly shambled to a given destination, and I would, for a minute, try to walk with poise, remembering the mincing gait of the delicate flower I once tried to be.

And being happy there was no tulle edging involved.

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Great heavenly days - go touch those balls. (thanks trinamick) Woo!

Also - for those more in tune with their inner God - check this game out....it's not as easy as you might think...and there are, apparently, no rules. Go! Create!!