Recital weekend is over.

I don't know if I ever mentioned it on here, but I dance. I've been doing it for years. I started when I was a kid and did it for a while, but quit. Mainly it was because I just was not having fun anymore. I remember being yelled at in class for not doing something properly. But when I was 21 I got the crazy idea to start taking classes again. And 13 years later, I'm still doing it. I even danced through two pregnancies! I'm not kidding when I say I danced on a Tuesday night and then went into labor and had my baby on the Friday of that same week. Actually, I did that with BOTH pregnancies! Of course I had to take it easy in class, but I still went to class every week and did what I could. The stretching was great for my body! :) And proudly, with both babies, I only missed 2 weeks of classes! :)

I take an adult jazz class, and yes, we do recital! Over the years I took some other classes too- a jazz class with younger girls, which I also went to competition with, and lyrical. One year I even did a jazz duet with my sister in law. I just love to dance. Wish I could do more now, even at 34 years old. I love performing in the recital.

Friends of mine have joined the class with me, and over the years they have come and gone and some are planning to come back when their lives slow down. There is still one friend who dances with me. But along the way I have made lots of great friendships with the ladies in my class and with the teachers at the studio.

My daughter dances too. Started when she was 3. This was her 6th year. She is even in a competition class :) We're talking about next year and I think we can maybe afford to let her take two classes. The hard part is deciding which to take.

Here is our class picture this year! I'm on the right on the floor! :) We danced to Barracuda...but a remade version by Fergie!

So I'm just gonna start talking about myself!!

I am desperately trying to find out what people want to read about in my blog. So we'll try this and see how it goes!

I decided a long time ago that I would never write a memoir or a biography. My life has been far too boring for that. Would anyone really care about a girl who was shy in school, went to college and didn't party, then got married, bought a house, had a decent job, then quit to run a home-based business and raise kids, then quit the business to write fiction?? Probably not. Yeah, some parts might be interesting enough for a short story...Chicken Soup for the Soul type stuff (and yeah, I have been published in CSFTS...twice. And I've submitted two others...still waiting to hear).

But anyway, you get my point. I'm not all that exciting.

But I do dance. And I love it. I wish I could do it more.

I took lessons when I was a kid, for a few years. But I just didn't enjoy it anymore. I remember being yelled at in class for not doing something properly. My mom let me quit. Several years passed and I just got the idea to start taking a dance class again. I was 21 at that point. I asked a woman I worked with where her daughter took lessons and if they had an adult class. They did. I went to Open House that Summer and signed up. I was so so nervous for the first class. But the week of, a friend of mine decided to sign up with me. That took the pressure off. The class was jazz, and mainly older women, 30's, 40's, some even older. We even performed in the yearly recital!

The class has changed a lot since then (12 years ago). From that first year, aside from the teacher, I am the only one still there. Other women have come and gone, friends of mine have joined and left. We've had some really fun songs for the recital over the years: Black Cat by Janet Jackson, Sisters by Annie Lenox, Welcome to the Jungle by Guns n Roses, One Night Only on the Dreamgirls Soundtrack, Are You Gonna Be My Girl by Jet, Free Your Mind by EnVogue, American Woman by Lennie Kravitz. So even though it is an adult class, we still danced to some pretty awesome songs and had some pretty cool routines. Our teacher does a great job of giving more difficult choreography to the ones (like me!) who can handle it.

Here's a pic from last year's recital, me and my daughter. My adult class danced to a spy-type song.



I even danced with the young girls for a couple years. I took a jazz class with the younger girls, something more challenging for me than the adult class and I loved that too. The next year I tried out for the competition teams and made it! I was 24 then, dancing in a class were the rest of the girls were 14-16 years old. It did feel kind of weird to be in that class...I had already been married for 3 years and had a full-time job. But it was fun!

Busy weekend is over...back to work!

This was dance recital weekend. Our studio does a Saturday night show and also a Sunday matinee. I like doing two shows....two chances to perform...and I so love performing!! It is quite a weekend....very busy, house looks like a tornado came through, but it was so worth it!! My back is killing me (been dealing with low back issues for over 9 years now and usually I am decent...but my last chiropractor adjustment didn't help much. I may go this week, I'm not scheduled to go till the 25th- my once a month visit, but this month may call for two.)

Okay, enough of that babbling!

I hope to work on my latest story today. It is technically finished and I've been through it once for editing. I sent it out to some readers who gave invaluable feedback..THANKS guys!!! Now I will go back and work on some spots that are a bit confusing.

I HATE when I screw up!!!

Anything. It's not that I need to be perfect...but when I screw up something simple that I really shouldn't have..it's aggravating.

I take a dance class...all adults...this is my tenth year at this studio. I danced when I was a kid, got away from it for a while, then went back when I was 22. I love it...so so much. So much that I had a window of a few months to get pregnant in so as to not have to drop out of dance class (luckily I am a fertile myrtle and both pregnancies happened the first month trying so I did not have to miss a year of dance for either baby.)

So anyway...tonight was dress rehearsal and I screwed up something as simple as walking!! Well, maybe not quite that simple. We're very business like this year...we have two songs- that 'Money, money, money, money' song...the Apprentice theme song and then 'Taking Care of Business' mixes in. We're wearing hounds tooth blazer type coats with either black pants or skirts. The beginning of the routine is us kinda walking across stage like we're on our way to work..some of us have briefcases, coffee mugs..I have a cell phone. We walk off stage then come back and into our starting formation- a triangle/pyramid.

The stage is MUCH larger than our classroom....I basically stayed off stage too long and could not get to my pyramid spot on time. RRRRRRRRR!!!

Lesson learned......no dilly dallying for the real show.....off, then right back on!!

Thanks for reading to my rant!