Saturday, March 28, 2015

Anyone remember that little challenge I gave myself...

I think it was over a year ago now. I was going to get back into dance shape and kind of push myself a bit. We all know where the road to good intentions go...

But I'm quite pleased with myself today. Today marks my third go round with my noisys (ie hardshoes) since the move :) And each session has been at least an hour :)

Have to give credit where credit's due: it's the new place making this possible. Not only has my daily to and from work gone from 12.2km down to 2.6km, giving me actual energy to dance after 8 hours on my feet, but there is a lovely unfinished basement. A concrete floor just begging for stomps and stamps, trebles and toe-jumps :)

Ah, it feels good after nearly 3 years away from it. Haven't tried anything softshoe; a little concerned about the hard floor and only having ghillies between it and my toes.

So for now, I'm trying to do one day a week for at least an hour. I've even got the Oracle out and been tackling not only good ol' St. Patrick's Day (steps 1 & 2 for now; my stamina is gone!!! how did I ever survive 1-5??), but I've dusted off the stampy Hornpipe (heehee, still picture David clapping to this) and Bernadette's Mayhem, the first (only?) treble jig I ever remembered mostly what I was supposed to do :) It feels good to be back at it :) I know my technique has gone to pot and my turn out is atrocious, but I'm working at it and maybe, maybe mind you, with a little perseverance I can get back to looking like a "real" dancer again. Or at least feel like one.


 TTFN

Wednesday, March 4, 2015

They say bad luck comes in 3s...

Oh dear. Where to start? As someone (Lewis Carroll?) once wrote, start and at the beginning and when you come to the end, stop. So here goes.

The 12th of January saw melting in the morning on my way to work. By lunchtime it was freezing rain and light snow was falling by the time I got off at 2. My first mistake was thinking it was fine to walk home. The second was taking the little cut through by the Bare Mountain trail. I fell. And once again landed on my left hand. Only this time I felt a pop. I took off my mitten to reveal the already bruising and swelling hand. Uh oh. I picked myself off, texted Roomie I was on my way back up the hill to go to the Emergency and slowly made my way back up passed work. Long story short, I cracked a bone in my hand and spent 11days in a splint/half cast and a further 4 weeks in a full cast. There was also soft tissue damage, again. Have to wear a tensor bandage around it if I'm at work still. Cast has been off 12 days today.

As if January wasn't sucking enough, there was heavy rains on the 25th. And with the ground frozen guess where the water decided to go? The joys of a basement apartment :( We got about 2" of water, which wasn't as bad as some but still bad enough. And I was at work when it happened. With a two-day-old full cast on my dominant hand. Oy. Long story short on this: we wound up moving to a lovely semi detached in a much more central location (15-20mins to work instead of an hour- hour+10).

As you can maybe guess, January was *not* my favorite month.  And enter February. Not too bad until the cast came off. Because of soft tissue damage taking longer to heal, I have a tensor wrapped around that hand/wrist at work. And two days after the cast came off I was hurrying to fill an order for several hot chocolates (mini rant: why do people come through drive thru and order huge orders?? Seriously, up to 4 drinks, fine. But 12? 15? And then complain that service is slow? You try doing your order, buddy. Let's see if you can fill it in under 2mins. Bet it would take you 10! Sorry, readers. end rant). Here's an interesting thing about hot chocolate: it's hot. And when it splashes back on a bandaged hand, it burns. And continues burning until the bandage can be pulled off and hand plunged under cold water. And an ice bath *will* prevent further damage but nasty blisters do form. Guess who gets hot chocolate burn scars down her thumb? Oy very.

2015 hasn't been too kind so far, but we're settling in and making the new place a home. The cats love the big windows and running up and down stairs (it's two stories plus full basement). I decided yesterday I was going to use the wool wash on two projects that got soaked in the flood and maybe work on one. I had tried to dry them in the damp apartment but not much luck so had put them back in their respective project bags (also soaked) and put both into a plastic bag *with* my bottle of Eucalan. And yesterday I made a discovery: that plastic bag never made it here :( It must've gotten shifted in all the confusion and wound up on the garbage pile :( So my lovely Carson shawl is no more :(


Even worse, the bag I was using for it was the bag I knit in 1999 to carry my softshoes, notebook and pen when I first started taking Irish dance. My lovely pale blue cabled bag that Ita (my first dance teacher, who passed from cancer in 2004) thought was such a clever thing and never failed to show people.

Ok, 2015, enough bad things. Can we now get on with the good stuff? Maybe a lottery win? Hint hint lol