New

It's been a while so I thought I would venture to do an update.

Chris and I spent 46 hours this week painting a mural in the basement of the Methodist church. He was off work and I owe him big time for working like a dog on a week off. But the mural looks good and I am just that much closer to completing the projects I promised I would start here. The other big one should be starting in the fall it is a midweek program. I promised to get one of those up and running, so I will be pleased when it finally hits.

I will be headed to Arkansas on the 29th of August to pick up a car that Chris' mom is giving him and I will be meeting the parents. It is kind of a frightening prospect, but he has already met mine. He actually knew my mom long before he met me and he just met my dad a few weeks ago. Thanks Sir for meeting us and treating us to lunch. But I have never really done the bring her home to meet mom and dad thing before.

In other news, I have now switched to a new instructor at the studio. Tim is expecting his third child now and is feeling too stretched between his wife wanting him to be home and needing to continue to study to keep up with his students, so he has decided to take a break for now. It was a wise decision on his part. Family comes first, but I was sad to see him go and I think he is bummed to not be dancing.

However the move to John will be a very good thing. He has spent a great deal more time lately training and knows a great deal more and I know I will learn a lot from him. Not to mention he is taller than me so I can wear real dance shoes and not have to be as low into my knees. It feels really good to stretch out after years of going so deeply into my knees. But as Ray told me long ago, learning how to dance low into my knees will just make me that much better of a dancers and will put me that much further beyond everyone else.

I think that is about it for now. Sunday School is almost over and I can head home soon. Happy Sunday!

Fall

So on Wednesday night in Ray's group, I fell for the first time in ballroom. It's a sickening feeling. I was dancing with little Alec. He is a fourteen year old that come up basically to my chest level. We were doing a really fast intricate quickstep. Crazy Sam, who has been dancing for at least 15 years now and still sucks, was doing his own thing and cut behind Alec and me. Now because of our height difference, Alec could not see directly behind me and I caught Sam leg with my leg and down I went. I was terrified of taking little Alec with me, so I pushed him off of me to ensure that he would not be injured. I tried to land as gracefully as possible without hurting anything important, eg. legs, back, head, feet. Instead I landed squarely on my tail bone.

I got up not terribly injured, but my butt was developing a knot already, but with a very bruised ego and extreme anger. You see, Sam never does what Ray tells him to. He doesn't listen and he is all over the place. It is hard to listen to Ray and do what you are supposed to when your partner is doing whatever the heck they want. So I already am severely annoyed with Sam and then because he is not doing what he is supposed to, I land on my butt. He walks up to me and says, "I did not get in the way." I said, "Actually, I did catch your foot." He says, "Oh" and walks away. Now I am seething. He made a woman fall, blames her for it, finds out he is to blame, and doesn't apologise? Really?

I find out that poor Alec went home and cried. He was so afraid that he had hurt me and that it was his fault. And while I don't typically have much sympathy or patience for Alec because he is a cocky hyper little kid, he was doing really well that night and totally surprised me.

So, here's the part where I am a bad person. The next night I am at the next Ray lesson and I am led out to the side in the direction of Sam and because Sam is never where he is supposed to be, his foot ends up squarely underneath my heel. And while this was a total accident. I felt a certain sense of poetic justice. I apologised to him and he would hear nothing of it. Oh well. Thus is the life of ballroom dancers.