New Endeavor

I went to my first ballroom dance class tonight. It was a bit of a surreal experience. I arrived a few minutes early in the ballroom at Findlay Student Center. The lights were down low and three or four people were clustered by the door. The instructor, Marie, said she had trouble finding the lights. That actually gave the room a bit of atmosphere though. I'd been nervous about going to the class and that only increased when I saw how few people were there. I thought there were two couples and myself but turned out it was a married couple, one of the faculty, and one of Marie's regular students. Everybody seemed to know more than I did. Surprisingly that didn't make me feel more than just a bit uncomfortable. We started off in a line going through the motions of the first dance with Marie in front leading us. She went through the male part first (it was hard not to follow that piece but I really would be confused attempting both parts). I was able to do a bit of that step which was fairly basic but we went through two dances and the second dance seems to have erased any memory I have of the first. I alternated between dancing with Brian, Marie's student, and Marie. I did better with the steps than I thought I would but have found out that I have a lot of difficulty relaxing and letting someone lead me. The second dance we learned involved a right step, left step, one two three, pattern which I quite liked. Difficult to keep track of what you're supposed to do with your hands while watching your feet and trying to pay attention to the music. Tricky business. One of the faculty who I believe had done this before was fun to watch. She had a lot of flair in her dancing. Someday I may have flair. Right now I just have willingness to learn and a decent attitude. I believe I'm not going to let it bother me that I don't have a partner or that I'm not as graceful as the others. I actually rather enjoyed it and I'm looking forward to trying it again.

Movement and Music

I've started wellness classes this week and am happy to be back into it. Cardio Sculpt was good this morning. It's just enough different from Crossfit to provide a little interest and Marie will also be teaching Ballroom Dancing on Thursday. I will be attending that class in the ballroom, which seems very apropos. In my mind I am making flowing, expansive movements with charm and grace. We'll see how the reality goes. Deep down my real problem with dance is that I'm really, really self-conscious. I have lots of voices in my head telling me I'm going to look stupid. Maybe one of these days I'll move beyond that (with Je ne sais quois LOL). By the way I ran across an interesting phrase when I was looking up the spelling for that... "Cette femme a je ne sais qua", meaning that "That woman has a certain thing I cannot explain", a charm , an indefinable enchantment. I'm telling you that could be me if I learn to dance. I'm already full of a lot of unexplainable, it's just a matter of adding the enchantment.

Speaking of enchantment... I ran across a new phone app last night. It's called Relax and Sleep - imagine that! It has everything from white noise to acoustic guitar to a cat purr. It has a sleep timer that you can set to shut off after you've gone to sleep and I believe you can set it to wake you up in the morning. My favorite sound is the music box. I haven't fallen to sleep to a music box in years but when I was little I could not sleep without my music box playing in the background. I stayed all night with my cousin when I was little and she got up and threw my music box outside in the yard because it was driving her crazy. I cried and cried - not... I'm just making that up to make Linda feel guilty. I don't really remember how I reacted, I was little. There used to be a shop in the mall that sold music boxes. Not the ones with the little twirly ballerina on it like the one I had. I wonder if that ballerina bounced when she hit the ground? Anyway these were really nice ones with really pretty boxes and some of them had disks so you could play different musical tunes on them. Fascinating. 

Thinking of that twirly ballerina reminds me that when I was in kindergarten at Evangel I was the fairy princess in a Christmas program. I got to wear a little pink tutu and my mom put my hair up in a bun. I had to flutter on my tippy toes and touch the toys (other students) that were sitting in this train on the head with my wand. I was six so it's all pretty vague. I do remember that I was urged to curb my enthusiasm when I tapped them. Ballroom dancing here I come!