emsk

We’re making progress around the house. Operation 2012: Tidy The Things was generally successful, and Operation 2013: Keep It Up is ongoing. Honestly, ongoing maintenance is the problem T and I have always had. We’re really good at doing Things when they are big enough to be Things. We are not very good at ongoing habits. But… we’re getting there.

A friend who’s handy was kind enough to investigate why the light fixture in our bedroom had died – it turned out to be the dimmer switch. No problem, we didn’t really use it anyway. Now we can fold laundry at night!

I went through my wardrobe again and generated another sackful of clothing I don’t need/don’t wear any more. Then went shopping to replace the things I actually NEEDED – work pants, work-suitable tshirts, shoes. Three hundred bucks later, I had three pairs of pants, a skirt, four shirts, and three pairs of shoes. Great success.

On a related note – why are the racks in the plus size section of Farmers closer together than they are in the rest of the store? This seems somewhat counter intuitive.

I’ve danced a lot less in the last couple of months. No particular reason – enforced break at Christmas, no classes I really felt like taking, my favourite teachers are still overseas, trying to be more sensible with cash… all of the above.

I’ve realised in the last week or two that I really NEED that time. As much as I’m an introvert, I need the people time. I need the energy, I need the exercise, I need the motivation and exhilaration I get from the challenge of dancing. I’m still teaching at the bar on Thursdays, which is good for me, but I need more than one night out.

So I’ve joined another performance course. Intermediate level this time; performing in Congress in Wellington in June. For which I won free accommodation, which is a nice boost to the budget.

Two and a half years I’ve been dancing. Who’d've thought I’d come this far?

I got home this afternoon, and ambled into the bathroom where my beloved husband was in the shower.

“It’s OK, love, I’m not watching, you don’t need to sing the little “I’m washing my bollocks” tune.”

“It’s the theme from Super Mario World, world 1, stage 1, on the super Nintendo.”

“.. er, if you say so, but you sing it to yourself every time you wash your bits.”

There was silence.

“I do?”

“Yes, love. It’s your little bollock-washing jingle. Didn’t you know?”

“I had NO IDEA.“

I periodically get on DIY kicks. Sometimes it’s sewing, sometimes it’s food… recently, it’s – let me start back a little further.

What with the dancing and everything, I discovered a newfound love of makeup. And also how comparatively crap my existing, elderly, cheap makeup was. So, I gradually invested in better quality makeup, in the right colours for me, and generally the result makes me happy.

I have funny skin, sometimes. My face annoys me, because it’s greasy around the chin and flaking-off-terribly across the eyebrows. (Of all the things I had to inherit from Mum, why that?) So, moisturiser became a requirement. To be fair, this was one of the things that goes with realising that, at age 29, I should probably attempt to take care of my face and/or act like a grownup. Astonishing concept, I know.

But oh man, moisturiser is expensive, and smelly, and half the time it irritates my skin, and wah wah wah. Then, lightbulb! Why not make my own?

Some time ago, I’d bought a jar of coconut oil on a whim. I mostly use it as a deep conditioner for my hair. Then I bought some beeswax – I think I originally pondered making a candle? Then I had a lightbulb moment, put the two together (along with some olive oil and butterscotch flavour oil), and voila – lip balm. Which I also use as cuticle cream and t-zone moisturiser at night. Even my lovely husband has noticed the improvement in my skin!

I ran out of coconut oil, inevitably, so ordered more from that fine source of all random things, The Internet. The stash arrived today; and an hour or so later, I have two bottles and four jars full of moisturiser. Coconut oil, cocoa butter, olive oil, vitamin E, beeswax, butterscotch and coconut perfume oils. It’s a lovely consistency, I inexplicably smell like walnut instead of any of the other options, my skin is lovely and soft and happy.

I am going to have to offload some of the results onto my mother, because otherwise I will still be using this in Christmas 2015. But you know, I’m OK with that.

Today, I got so happily engrossed in work that I nearly missed my lunchtime leg&eyebrow-wax appointment. I got there about three minutes late, and realised on the way back to work that wearing tight jeans, in midsummer, on the day you get your legs waxed, is a really stupid idea! It was hot and my pores are complaining and my jeans stuck to my legs for the rest of the afternoon. I had a cold bath when I got home to give my poor legs a chance to cool down.

I got complimented on my makeup, which is funny for the following reason: I couldn’t get last night’s eyeliner OFF, so I cut my losses, tidied it up and put some eyeshadow on before I left for work. (Also, I love the Urban Decay palette that I acquired over Xmas, it’s fantastic.)

I went to a bar with workmates to farewell a workmate who’s disappearing to Australia, called my mum while I walked to the bus stop; I am now happily ensconced in the snug with Tigra, a Coke, and my husband has been sent out to acquire dinner.

It’s been a pretty good day.

I’ve started teaching zouk now. I am thrilled by this. See, the social nights I go to at a local bar start with a free beginner class. November-ish last year, I turned up early (ie, in time for the actual class – for hopefully obvious reasons I had been skipping it). The teacher was on his own, so I dived in to help. After that, he asked me to keep teaching with him, and hello YES PLEASE. I love teaching anyway, I love zouk, and this way I can give a little back to the hobby that’s given me so much. It’s basic basic beginner’s stuff, which I can do in my sleep, and I’m thoroughly enjoying teaching.

I suspect that there is another advantage to someone like me teaching. I am not intimidating – I am overweight, I am going to turn thirty this year, I am approachable for most of the women who show up for the first time. (Opposed to the slim twenty year old blonde stereotypical dancer.) I do have gorgeous hair, even if I say so myself.

So, people show up, they laugh at my jokes (all stolen from other dance teachers), they learn the steps, they go “you make it look so eaaaasy” at me, I generally feel good about myself.

As well as Cyclenut’s mum, who puts in regular appearances at the bar – did I mention that Cyclenut’s mum started turning up? She did, and I felt a bit awkward at first and then I got over it – I ran into a manager from my previous job. I got along well with him when I worked there, and we chit-chatted quite a bit last night (which was his first lesson). I even got a hug when he left!

I got some compliments on the class, which is always nice, and more importantly, several people cheerfully told me they’re coming back next week.

It’s been a pretty good week, actually.

This has been the LOVELIEST Christmas.

Christmas day, we had the usual suspects for dinner, five altogether. Boxing day, we had seven; then the 27th, a pair of friends with three kids dropped in, for a further excellent dinner.

There has been lots of food and ham and puddings and ham and more food and we don’t want ham again until at least Easter, seriously, and fruit mince pies – I still have 1.5kg of fruit mince jarred up, will it keep until next xmas you think? and excellent company, and games of the card, computer, and beach-ball variety, AND I still don’t have to go back to work until the 7th Jan and I am a happy woman.

I’ve cleaned some things, but not all the things I want yet. Still, I’m happy with the overall success of Operation 2012: the house is still a bit of a problem in certain areas, but I feel more on top of the overall operation. Life-management is always a work in progress.

I’ve also had the time to be crafty. In the last couple of days, I’ve finished these two. It’s continuing to be a good vacation.

In the car on the way home, I pulled out a looong white hair. (I have long hair. Everyone knows this. This was a full length, perfect white, hair.)

While ranting about the woes of being an adult, I realised that Tobermory was kind of smiling. This was unacceptable mid-rant, of course, so I demanded an explanation.

“It’s just … it’s kind of nice. We’re actually growing old together.”

Husband points: +18297384739. Rant: deflated.

It’s been a mildly productive weekend. Mount Washmore has been re-vanquished, and new laundry hampers obtained. One is black, one is white; the uses should be pretty obvious from there.

We actually operate three hampers; darks, lights, and my delicates slash stuff I’m going to wear again but isn’t clean any more. It works well.

I also got my crafty on. Coming up to giftmas, I knew I’d have to reorganise the cards, envelopes, wrapping stuff, etc etc etc. Last time I juggled the snug, I’d tidied via the method of “put things in a drawer, worry about it later” and last night was “later”.

After four shelves in my Expedit were rejuggled such that their contents were a) accessible b) sensibly arranged, five drawers ditto, I was left with a pile of tidy things. Two large Tupperware containers were called into service, and two Pringles tubes have been modpodged with fabric, sealed, and commissioned for the purposes of holding tape. Said tape was previously corraled in a ziplock bag, which did work, but made the drawer an absolute arse to rummage through.

I also bought some decent eyeliner, for the first time ever. One of the things that became apparent with the round of dance performances in the last month was that either my makeup-application abilities were sorely lacking, or my actual makeup was sorely lacking. I bet on the latter, bought some decent brushes, a gel eyeliner; found the makeup mirror hiding in a drawer in the spare room (why?), repaired it (the plastic support frame had cracked), and this morning experimented with my new eyeliner.



A webcam is not really an ideal source of eye photography, but I’m quite pleased with myself. Eyeliner! where it belongs! unsmudged! Hooray!

The garage now contains both cars, and does not contain any of the following things:

* a couch

* a coffee table

* large piles cardboard, misc

* rubbish, misc

* two dvd players [dead] (also, why?)

The living room has similarly had all of it’s misc: crap removed.

Admittedly, the misc: crap has been moved into the spare rooms; but the spare rooms are presently in a condition whereby both beds are usable (which beats where we were last time I updated re: Operation 2012). A LOT of stuff went out in the inorganic collection.

Mum visited during October, and was lovely enough to help me tackle the garage and the spare rooms. Most of what’s left just requires a bit of time, which is something I simply don’t have enough of.

This weekend, Tobermory and I attacked our bedroom. We’d been growing unfortunately attached to the floordrobe, I have a jewellery cupboard which didn’t contain any of my jewellery on account of it migrating elsewhere, a dresser piled up with crap, the floor hadn’t been vacuumed in I don’t even want to contemplate how long, and I couldn’t GET to my bits of the walk in wardrobe because of Mount Foldmore.

The floor has been vacuumed, which was a bit of a mission in vacuum for a bit, pop the foot off, use the suction to clean the foot, vacuum, pop foot, clean foot, etc; but the cat fur is actually removed. The heaters have been put away for the summer. The floordrobe has been removed from the sides of the bed, and washed and/or put away and/or stuck in the hamper for washing later. We had a hamper frame hanging about, so I turned two pillowcases into a hamper… sack… thing. So now we have three hampers; “normal washing” which my beloved handles, “delicates that I have to wash”, and “clothes that don’t need washing yet but aren’t clean either”. At least if it’s corralled in a hamper, it’s not spreading itself around on the floor. We also attacked and vanquished Mount Foldmore. I can walk! on the actual FLOOR!

When I unearthed three handbags from the pile, I decided my handbag storage also needed an overhaul. The wardrobe has a storage shelf, up very high; the handbags are now all hanging off that. Hopefully it continues to work.

Dance is all sorts of things for me. Exercise, people contact, fun. I lost three kilos in the two weeks running up to Nationals.

A lot of it is escapism. It’s my third circle of acquaintance, the one that doesn’t interconnect with work or with home/friends/family (although I’d actually like it to). If I’m having a bad day at work I can go home. If I’m having a bad day at home, I can go dancing. If I’m having a bad day dancing, well, I can go home!

I get on reasonably well with my dance acquaintances. I’ve never made friends easily, but they’re a friendly bunch; I can chitchat and gossip happily, I can turn up to social events and not feel alone. We’re all united by enjoyment of the hobby, and that matters more than the differences in the rest of our lives.

Swimming’s the only thing that’s ever come close. The careful balance between me and my breath and the water. The crisp shock as I dive into the pool for the first time, the slice of my shoulders through the surface. The absolute aloneness of me and the water, even in a crowded pool. The challenge of working harder, swimming further, pushing harder, the burn of muscles and lungs, water breaking around me and the rush of air as I breathe.

Dancing’s like that. The stretch and ache of a warmup, the heartbeat snapping up and muscles burning, the tension of balance, connection, movement. For those three, four, five minutes that I’m dancing, nothing exists except the floor and our bodies, nothing matters but holding to the beat and the music.

Dancing feels like coming home.

I don’t really have a bucket list.

But I just entered the NZ Salsa Champs in the Zouk Open category. We did pretty well, given our absolute lack of experience, and um also lack of PRACTICE, we did amazingly well. We – well, largely I – choreographed our routine in about 6 hours, it was fairly simple… We did good and I’m proud of what we accomplished in a VERY short time.

Cross that off the bucket list!!