Weekend Things

We’ll start with the ballroom stuff since I put that as a topic. For reasons that will become clear later in this post, we had a coaching lesson scheduled for Friday but had to move it to early in the day (1 PM). I’m kind of a creature of habit and getting ready for a lesson in the middle of the day was a bit odd. We worked on the Bolero. The original goal was to enhance the performance aspects and we did touch on that including fixing one awkward spot. But a lot of the lesson was spent more on refining the technique and working around my bad knees.

This is part of the fall out from having multiple different instructors during my ballroom life. I think there’s been too much focus on steps and patterns as each person kind of assumes I know things and I don’t always know what I don’t know. OK, you never know what you don’t know. In some ways, it feels a little deflating to have to “go back to basics” but, in the end, reinforcing things I need to be doing will help make the dance better.

My brother had planned a surprise party for my sister in law as she hit a milestone birthday and it was set for Friday night which is why the lesson needed to be moved. The last time I met her family was at their wedding so I get there and the only people we know are their kids. So it was an awkward introvert moment for the two of us.

Her brother and his wife did come over to talk to us a bit so it wasn’t like we just totally ignored but I think it is an introvert nightmare to be in a room full of people who all know each other and you know none of them. We did manage to sneak across the room to chat with our nephew as he was holding up the wall on the other side. So that was good.

This weekend was also the opening of a Flower and Patio show where various landscape companies build little displays to show you what your outdoor living space could look like provided you have the space and money. I see some of these and I always question the practicality. I mean we have chairs on our deck and I love to sit outside but, when it rains, the cushions get soaked and it typically takes multiple days for them to dry out. Open air spaces are great but I don’t know how much use you’d actually get out of them around here.

But we go just to see the flowers because it is the end of winter and we are tired of the gloom. We do have daffodils up so spring has started to poke through but it is nice to see more colors. I wish we could plant tulips but there are too many critters that make meals of the bulbs that you only get one season out of them if you are lucky. So we live vicariously through displays like this.

And, as seems to be tradition, there is always a cold snap the opening weekend of this show. Like winter knows we are ready for spring but just want to troll us one last time. We woke up Sunday to snow on the trees and grass but it did melt rather quickly.

Today is cloudy and cold with snow flurries. After a weekend of activity, I’m fine with just staying inside all day today. Best thing about no longer working is that if I don’t want to go anywhere, I don’t have to.