Riot and Frolic

Ukulele and Ballroom Dancing

I've taken up the ukulele.  As in, I pick it up and pluck out the same four chords over and over with a small amount of variation and a lot of mistakes.   But I keep strumming.  

The G effortlessly grabs the uke and plays recognizable songs without sticking his tongue out and in a constant tempo.  Granted, he's been playing stringed instruments for years, but it's a little frustrating when my hard work (and seemingly small rewards) are overshadowed by someone who has more training (and proooobably talent) than I do.

Is my perseverance to learn the ukulele a waste of time, when I compare my skills to others? 

Hell no!

Is it a bash to my fragile ego?

Hell yes!

But here's some basic truths I've discovered about learning:

• if you surround yourself with people who are better at something than you, you are likely to get better, faster. [See: trip to France when I spoke no French.  At the end of ten days, I could order a Nutella crepe, with banana!, and pay for it, including some pleasantries, in the native language.]
• there are lots of tools to help you learn something.  The most important part of that is "you".  [See: my stack of crocheting books, magazines, and internet printouts.  I sat down for a weekend with a ball of yarn and hooked my way through all the basic stitches and now I enjoy crocheting.]
• the biggest trick is to actually do it, because no one can make you learn something that you don't want to learn.  [See: my Calculus grade freshmen year in college.]
• sometimes, it is hard.  To quote Pineapple Pete, the ukulele [and ballroom dancing] has "really complicated, fine-coordination tasks to do, quick, in time, quickly quickly quickly".   [See: freaking bachacatas in Samba or fingerpicking any song, ever.]
  

  this is what happens when you try to do Samba while playing the ukulele
• there is always someone who is more talented or has more training than you do.  If you compare yourself to others, you'll often be disappointed in your own awesome and worthy progress.  Make goals, crush goals, make new goals, crush new goals.  [See: play "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" without mistakes with a metronome.]
• you and your new thing are going to have to spend some time together.  You decide on how much time that will be.  If you practice once a week for an hour, it'll take you forever to see progress.  If you do it for an hour a couple times a week, you'll have a decent repertoire in a few months.  [See: my knitting... not great... because I do it once a year.]
  

  oooh, today is my knitting day!
• like Julie Andrews says, you should start at the beginning; it's a very good place to start.  While jumping in to playing "Tonight You Belong to Me" or doing Open-level choreography seems fun, you'll be missing out on the process of understanding your craft and making things a lot more frustrating for yourself (and anyone who's listening or watching you) in the long run. [See: my attempt to copy "Tonight You Belong to Me" played by the phenomenal Steve Martin.  Sorry, G!] 

Happy learning, everybody!

If anyone gets why this man is on the bottom of the page (in the context of the blog), I'll bake you cookies.

 

Living The Dream

For awhile, I thought the Ultimate Prize would be going to Wanderlust Festival (in Whistler, BC, Canada: because traveling internationally [even in the same continent] is neater) for the FULL four days ALONE to enjoy the yogas and the Canadas and the not-childrens.  

After spending a solid 10 days without my children and 3 days without my husband, I've adjusted the Ultimate Prize to having a trust-worthy, yet INVISIBLE nanny/housekeeper.  Like, a friendly ghost with telekinesis.  Or, a helpful ninja.

Growing Up Via Vegetables

I have an scale of perceived adulthood based on how many vegetables I eat a week.  

I average out as a toddler.

In order to approach my actual age, or at least someone who can buy beer, I made that cauliflower-based pizza crust that's been all the rages on da blogs and da internets.  

Here is the recipe I used: [the link for the recipe I used].

It wasn't bad.  I mean, if you're looking for the guilty-pleasure kind of pizza that's laden with carbs and gluten, this isn't it.  It tastes a bit healthy, but also less like a heart attack.  Lose-win.   

The main controversy with most cauliflower-based crust recipes is that you can't pick the slice up with your hands.  A fork is required, and thus, your brain knows it's not really pizza and is on to your little ruse and tastes the cauliflower EXTRA.

But check it:

Well, brain, I've fooled you.  The small children who inhabit my house didn't fall for it, but strangely, The G did.

I recommend trying the fake pizza trend.  We can all grab a beer together afterward.

One year ago: The Garden of Good (and Barely Any Evil), in which I am sad about radishes, but happy about flowers and cement.

Two years ago: Oh snap, in which I have a new blog design, which was referring to the old blog design. 

List of Last Week's Labors of Love

- rumors about me made their way back around into my ear.  Hey, silly people, I'm not opening a studio.  Do I have a business plan, business loan, a space to lease, or any of the other things needed to open a dance studio?  No.  

If, at some point, I [we] decide to open a groovy place to learn and practice ballroom dancing, I'll let you know.  

- here's my charm bracelet:

I ordered it all off amazon.com from a company called Queenberry.

- blueberry muffins, or blueblerry muffins, if you ask Mae Cake.  I subbed brown rice flour in for the regular flour.  They were very good, but very crumbly and had a slight metallic aftertaste.  Has anyone else had this happen with brown rice flour?

- new running shoes.  I have about 300 miles on my old ones, so it's time to break in some "new" ones.  They're the same model as my current pair, just the BRIGHTEST YELLOW EVER. (Maladriot, we're twinsies!) 

- preparing for "summer vacation".  The ladies are heading to my in-laws for 10 days (not that I'm counting), so I dug up a crochet pattern that I've been dying to try, packed and labeled little girl clothes, and made a huge to-do list.  

Since we're heading to a competition later this week, I think this hot man picture is relevant.

One year ago: LLLL, in which we see farm animals.

 

Dance Sarcastically

 

One of my favorite movies is The Other Guys, which besides starring Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrell, has one of the funniest lines ever in it:

    You learned to dance like that sarcastically?

Often in tough practice sessions, when things just aren't working or I don't feeeeeel it, I dance sarcastically.

I pick my favorite dancer to channel (Joanna!  Marzena!), or my least favorite, yet most expressive, over-the-top dancer (let's not name names!) and proceed with the following scene...

    Me (sarcastic tone): Hey Gordon, watch this [insert dramatic, confident, enormous, and silly-feeling rock step and spin combination, imitating So-and-So]

    Gordon (completely sincere): That looked awesome.

    Me: Shit.

The dance floor is not the place to be in my head, listing off all the things I did wrong and chastising myself and getting self-conscious.  (That's what the practice floor is for, sort of.)  The dance floor is where I go, "Look at me!" and if I have to say it sarcastically, then so be it.

LOOK AT ME!

One year ago: One Thing, in which I do... one thing.

Two years ago: It's Getting Hot in Herre, in which MN proves it can get above 70 degrees in June.