Reasonable things to do when 28 years of age, on a Saturday:
1) Eat cookies for breakfast, and forgo lunch through laziness.
2) Go to a 2.5 hour bellydance class.

Stupid things to do when 28 years of age, on a Saturday:
Do both of the above on the same day.

I did get a nice compliment from the teacher when learning the basic undulation.
“Have you done belly dance before?”
“Nope, never.”
“You’re remarkably capable with those muscles then!”
It is of course because I do zouk, as there’s a lot of isolation work required to do zouk properly. It was still nice.

I think I’ll do belly dance again. It was a fantastic workout, it’s something I’d like to do anyway, and the skill will translate helpfully through to zouk and salsa.

My abs hurt like whoa, I am tired, and I have just started to put a lasagna together, starting with the egg+flour to make pasta stage. This is a good Saturday, stupidity with cookies aside.

Our second wedding anniversary passed quietly, but pleasantly. The year has had several ups and downs – but I am proud of us. Instead of letting problems overwhelm us, we’ve closed ranks and worked together.

Tobes was outside work a couple weeks ago, and saw something he liked. Old man on a mobility scooter, his wife with a walker. Wife presumably got tired going uphill; sat on her little walker seat, and husband pushed her up the hill with his mobility scooter. He came home and told me that that’s the kind of marriage he wants to have.

I’ve had a photo printed for my desk at work. It’s from L&V’s wedding last December – Tobermory looks most handsome in his usher’s suit, and I’d chosen a nice dress. It’s a pleasant picture, a pleasant memory, and I like having things like that around in my workspace.

Anniversaries and things always get me thinking. In this case, it was realising that I’m not all that far from thirty, so why on earth am I still using a facewash marketed at acne-ridden teenagers? I’ve switched, and after a fortnight my face is much happier.

I decided that I’m going to start wearing some makeup regularly. I spend a lot more time in user-view than I used to, and I feel a bit more confident if I have some war paint on. I don’t wear too much – eyeshadow, mascara, lipstick which is a shade or two darker than my natural lip color. I can put it on correctly without needing a mirror, even, which is nice. I’ve also ditched all the old or unused makeup. The remainder is corralled in a train case, and I invested a little bit of money in buying some new things in nice grownup brands – eyeliner, foundation, some new shadows, that kind of thing.

The dance performance fell through. Insufficient men.

Operation 2012 hit a roadbump, but has resumed progress. My mother visited for a few days, and with her help the Piles of Crap in the spare room were vanquished. She also springcleaned for me, so things like the skirting boards were washed. It’s lovely, the house is actually maintainably clean now.

With Psycho’s help, we got into the garden over the last few weekends. Four trees are demolished, in piles pending hiring a skip / pending transportation of firewood to his house, and their stumps have been drilled and poisoned. (Then covered so the cats couldn’t get into it.) Thaqui’s side of the house is now accessible, having had all the over hanging branches / plants / bits of tree removed. We really need to get a skip in, so that the section can be cleared of miscellaneous tree, but at least it’s tidily piled now. I even mowed (half) the lawn.

T and I rejuggled the chore allocations, which is helping. He’s now master in charge of laundry – provided it’s pre-sorted into lights and darks (which is a no-brainer with three laundry hampers – light, dark, and delicates, which remain my responsibility), he stays well on top of the laundry, unlike yours truly. In return, vacuuming has become my problem. I wouldn’t say I’m thrilled about the exchange, but it does result in more cleaning being done more often, which is the idea.

As well as the misc gardening, I sewed a new duvet cover, hemmed a too-long pair of jeans, got a lead on replacement bobbins for my long-suffering Bernina – it’s older than I am – and made muffins and mini-crustless-quiches for the workweek.

It was quite a productive weekend, really.

It’s funny how a small break from routine can really cast a lot of light on things, isn’t it?

I decided a few years ago that I needed to reprioritise things – it’s not that I was unhappy with my life, but I felt like I didn’t have anything in it that I did purely for myself, for selfish enjoyment. I balance friends and work and caring for our home and (most importantly!) our marriage, and the cats and and and… I needed something in there that was just for ME. And dance is good exercise and it makes me happy.

Over Easter, there was a local dance festival called Jambalaya. I decided that if I wasn’t good enough this year, I was never going to be, so I summoned up courage and went to the advanced zouk immersion course. The teachers were Rodrigo Delano and Adriana Coutinho – and Adriana was the world champ in 2011. I was feeling pretty brave to go at all – I’ve only been doing this for a year, how can I think I’m good enough to learn from people that good? But it was utterly, utterly FANTASTIC.

They are amazing teachers, as well as amazing dancers – not necessarily skills that go alongside each other. It was a three day immersion – six hours Friday, three Saturday, three Sunday, plus other workshops if we wanted, plus dance parties every night. All up I spent 20 hours dancing over the three days, plus putting 330km on the car to get there and back again. I was EXHAUSTED on Monday. But oh man, it was so so so worth it, just utterly amazing.

I really love dancing. I wish I’d started years ago, but I didn’t have the confidence then. Dance in itself has given me confidence, though – the more I do, the more I learn, the more I go out on my own to dance socially, the more my confidence improves.

Sunday night, as part of the festival all the immersion courses performed. There were about 300 people in the audience – and I actually got up on stage with the rest of my zouk class to perform too. And you know what? it was really fun. Two years ago I would never have had the courage to do it.

I don’t think that I’m brave. I just care less what other people think of me than I used to. I still have “oh no I will be mocked” moments, but I can usually work out that I’m being silly.

There’s a salsa congress in Wellington over Queen’s Birthday, which I just bought my tickets for this week. I have signed up for a salsa performance course (first rehearsal was last night actually), to be performed at the congress.

I’m pleased for another reason – my salsa teacher invited me to join the zouk performance course that starts in June. We’ll be performing in August. I went to the event we’ll be at last year; in fact it was the first ‘real’ dance event I ever went to (other than social nights), and it was a lot of fun. Mostly I’m stoked that I was asked! My salsa teacher is also one of the first people that taught me zouk; I hopped studios mid last year, when the female zouk teacher went overseas. I danced with him a few times at Jambalaya – I guess he’s realised that I’ve learned a lot in the intervening months. And more importantly, that I love zouk as much as I do.

I had time to get to a zouk intermediate class last night after salsa rehearsal. It turned out to be a small class – me plus one man, who I have danced with before – so I had an utterly fantastic lesson. They taught us a combination that includes moves which I already knew, so I got to learn them PROPERLY. The hardest bit was suicidio – the suicide move. (That’s the best video I can find on YouTube, but it’s actually not done very well.) Although it looks like the woman is throwing herself down (suicidally), it’s quite the reverse. You have to be led into the drop, and that bit was REALLY hard for me to learn. When I was first taught suicidio, I didn’t have the core strength, or understanding, to do it properly, and I constantly fell on my knees or on my butt and of course, the more I did it wrong the more nervous I got, so I kept doing it wrong! Last night, I finally got it right, and consistently enough that my teachers could help me improve on it. So I learned all sorts of things about maintaining connection with my partner, how to support my weight more with my glutes/quads than core/knees, lots of things like that. In fact, at the end of the class my teacher complimented me on how far I’d come as a dancer. Happy glow.

I come home from lessons like that really pleased. Partly the physical aspect, the .. whichever happy chemicals it is you get from exercise, partly the mental aspect of learning, partly the sheer pleasure of music/dancing that I’ve always had. It’s nice to be achieving something, however small.

I have returned from Work Roadtrip. Damn near 400km on 30l of gas. I’m happy with that.

I enjoyed detouring to visit my mother, too. We had a very pleasant dinner – I introduced her to Japanese food for the first time. I couldn’t believe that she’d never even had sushi!

Then I came home, hugged my husband, and went out to a zouk party. I was having a good evening right up until some arsehole informed me that he wasn’t desperate enough to dance with fat chicks. There’s a reason I stopped asking men to dance, and that right there is it.

L’esprit de l’escalier being what it is, I didn’t think to point out that it was astonishing anyone could dance with him, with his head shoved that firmly up his arse.

Amongst the other things in my Foodbox this week, I had a 10kg box of cooking-quality plums. So far, we’ve had an epic plum crumble and eight jars of jam.

I’m on the road again next week, for work. This time, I’m fairly close to my hometown – so I’m driving down in my own car (although will be expensing the mileage), and I’ll swing past and visit Mum Friday night, Nana Saturday, and home that afternoon/evening. I’m looking forward to the trip – it’s awhile since I’ve seen Nana, and it’s an opportunity to drop off some of the ridiculous amounts of jam/sauce I’ve managed to collect in the pantry lately. Fortunately both Mum and Nana actually like jam, as 10kg of plums turns into a truly ridiculous amount of jam, even after I set some aside for plum crumble. We’re going to be eating this all year.

Tobermory’s taken over breadmaker duties lately. He makes a good loaf of bread! This is helpful, admittedly largely as a delivery mechanism for more jam. I also make my own yoghurt, and tend to make plain unsweetened yoghurt and flavour it myself. I suspect plum jam is going to feature highly over the next few batches.

I bought a clock for the snug a few weekends ago. The inflatable one I’ve had since high school gave up the ghost at long last – the clock mechanism, not the inflatable bit, surprisingly enough – so I bought a round, equally bright yellow, clock to replace it.

I have not been allowed to throw away the box.