Riot and Frolic

What is Dancing? Agreement

Previously on Riot and Frolic [cue cleverly edited montage of my witty and amazing writing voiced over by Morgan Freeman with some dramatic and foreboding music in the background]...

But really, I was talking about partner dancing and what the hell are we getting into when we go social dancing.  And I copied my own work and changed some words and came up with this:

Number 1 when we go partner dancing is we agree to dance with someone.  Once we hit the floor with our chosen partner, we're agreeing to dance with that person from this dance until the end of this dance, for better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in health.

That isn't to say grounds for divorce won't apply, but you should have a clear, verbal agreement before you begin your partnership, no matter how brief it may last.  Many of these things will be implied, but if you have ANY DOUBTS, please be explicit about your wants and needs:

• Who is leading and who is following? While most dancers think this is obvious, it's not in many circles.   If you're at an event where partnerships are pretty liquid, go ahead and confirm which part you enjoy doing.
• What dance are you doing?  Many songs could be a Cha Cha, Rumba, OR West Coast Swing, and if you're comfortable with all of them, it's still nice to be mentally, physically, and attitudinally [it's totally a word] prepared.  
• What level will you be dancing?  If you are a beginner, you can state exactly that: "I'm new to [whatever dance you're about to do]," and hopefully your delightful partner will follow suit. If you're not a beginner and you have no idea how well your partner can dance, you will do some magical basics to get a feel for their proficiency, but you WILL NOT ASK "BRONZE OR SILVER?" OR THE LIKE. That use of lingo produces a culture of separation that turns off a lot of potentially awesome partners, especially when not all dance genres use the same distinctions to describe someone's skill level.
• What are your limitations? Maybe you have a bad ankle, or just had shoulder surgery, or had vertigo last week, or got whiplash in an unfortunate Tango accident earlier that evening, WHAT HAVE YOU.  Please disclose these kinds of things so your partner can help provide an enjoyable experience during your dance together.

While all these things should be understood between both parties before dancing, make sure you have your end of the pre-nup in order.  There is much more implicit agreement you have accepted when you showed up at this dance function, namely several rules of good manners.

• Hygiene I've talked about this before, but it deserves another mention.  A recent shower, breath mints, deodorant, and a fresh shirt or two go along way.  
• Language Those who know me know I loooooove a good curse word or three, but when I'm around "mixed company" I try to keep my vocabulary PG.  Please, thank you, "may I" and all that BS [see? OOPS] are all really lovely to hear, especially because the dance world is a great networking device and you never know when you might be talking to someone who needs a new contractor. 
• Positive Intent When you decide to go dancing, you are also deciding to shut up, smile, and dance.  You are there to have fun, dancing, with other people.  You are not there to teach, or solicit feedback, or grope your partners.  Have a polite conversation if you can multi-task while doing your Rumba, and dance to the best of your ability with each amazing person you get to dance with.  The Golden Rule and all that.  

What if our beautifully negotiated contract can't hold water?  It happens.  Just like in The Real World, sometimes people don't click on the dance floor.  Can you last another 50 seconds with this person? Yes, you can.  However, repeated or blatant disregard for the following rules is grounds for divorce with the resolution being immediate separation and an amicable reunion in the future being rare.

• Cruelty Besides the blessed light-as-a-feather/heavy-as-a-brick follow, there's the leads who don't know they're squeezing the circulation from your hand or torquing your wrist in the weirdest way.  Follows meander away while turning, leads crash into other dancers, all parties might sweat profusely or smell bad.  THESE ARE ALL MINOR AND OFTEN UNCONSCIOUS BEHAVIORS.  Please refer to that "Positive Intent" line above.  On the other hand, excessive force from either party, any tricks (continuous turns, dips, lifts and drops) without prior awareness of said skill, and general "jerkiness" (counting out loud to "help", verbal guidance, etc.) are all over the line.
• Sexual Harrassment You would think this goes without saying these days, right?  But let's be clear, I can completely tell when someone does an accidental graze because they forget where their free arm was and when someone is trying a grab-ass.  Let's keep the ballroom sexy, yet civilized and leave the groping to da club [uhn-ce, uhn-ce, uhn-ce].
• Substance Abuse Sure, a drink might loosen one's inhibitions to ask an attractive stranger to dance, but if you're sloshed (or worse) on the dance floor, you're a mess to dance with.  Stop it.
• Irretrievable Breakdown Probably not grounds for immediate desertion, but there are people who will get on your nerves and leave your partner dance experiences less savory.  It is okay to politely decline every single time they ask you to dance or avoid them like the plague.  

All of this, just to dance with someone?  YES.  It's better to cover your ass before you start dancing with a new person, and if any of your circumstances change along the way with a dance acquaintance (injury, mostly), you should renew your vows with them. 

Next time, I'll shake my head and cover my eyes as I talk about timing.

Field Trip : ABLMS

What the hell is ABLMS?  It DOES NOT sound like a fun field trip.  It sounds like an acronym for a horrible disease.

But DO YOU LIKE FOOD? DO YOU LIKE CHEAP, BUT AWESOME, LOCALLY-RAISED FOOD?

ABLMS stands for Andrew Boss Laboratory of Meat Science, located on the "farm campus" [ahem, St. Paul] at the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities.  Professor Boss would have made any urban homesteader or hipster farmers marketer proud with his pioneering philosophy on quality and variety in meat production. 

More importantly for you, it's the location of the U of M Dairy and Meat Salesroom, where you can buy fantastic ... wait for it ... meat and dairy at well below grocery store prices. 

I heard legends of the store through a few foodie, cheapskate friends and then came across another tale of it's glory in the charming Minnesota Table : Savoring Local Food throughout the Year by Shelley Holl and BJ Carpenter.  

The hours were a bit baffling, clocking in at 2-5pm on Wednesdays.  Only.  Ever.  And those hours didn't include the extra time you'd presumably have to spend finding parking on the notoriously unparkable St. Paul streets and standing IN LINE before the doors open to the eagerly-waiting public.  

Last week brought an open schedule at 1pm on Wednesday, and I packed up and headed out a bit warily for my excursion.  Plugging in the location to my Google and arriving just a short time later (I do live in the "farm country" of the Twin Cities, meaning St. Paul), I found a brightly colored sign marking the market entrance directly in front of a prime parking spot.  

It was fate.  Fate wanted me to buy as many products as I could fit in my bags and lug home.  The short walk to the doors proved it.  

January is the "slow month", but there were still over 10 people filling the tiny store (my highly honed estimating skills make the entire room to be 14' x 35') for the 30 minutes I collected goods.  I've heard all other months, there's a line outside the door, where you wait for one customer to leave, so another can go in.  

Each long wall is filled with tall freezer and refrigerator coolers, filled with ice cream, cheese, sometimes yogurt and cottage cheese, and meats of all varieties.  Meats run the gamut between regular ground pork/beef/turkey and roasts to all sorts of fun offal, suet, and interesting cuts.  There's also pre-made burgers, sausages, and jerky.  

If you're in a hurry or don't need to gawk at all their products, you can pre-order your items and the student staff will have them waiting for you when you arrive on market day.  

Is everything delicious?  So far.  I bought a variety of staples for my first go, and for feeling like I paid so little I stole it, I'm impressed.  

Want to see what they offer? Here's a list of meat products and dairy products (not all things are available all the time).

Follow the yellow-signed hallway:

The goods:

If you happen to get there (or have been there before!), I'd love to hear what you think about ye olde ABLMS.

What is Dancing?

Recently, we went out dancing with a gang of our students to a long-standing swing joint, the Wabasha Street Caves.  It's an old mob hangout in a cave along the Mississippi River, which now legitimately hosts weekly swing dances with live big bands.

While obviously the setting is amazing and atmospheric and nearly everyone had one of their first partner-dance experiences there, I was left with a really unsettled question:

What is dancing?

Let's narrow it down to "what is partner dancing?" because I can't tell you what all dancing is or is supposed to be (modern, for example, continues to be a very cool mystery to me).  

I do however, feel like I have a pretty good grasp on partner dancing.

Classically, I love the definition being "two people dancing as one".  Spending time in studios and competition floors makes that an easily accepted idea.  Move.  Lead.  Follow.  Technique.  Patterns.  Fancier patterns.  Fancier technique.  Etc. 

But as we walked in the historic Caves and were greeted by a majority of under-18 dancers (you guys, like, SO MANY high schoolers), my question began forming.

Now, I know what it's like to forget the basic.  I remember clearly my first lesson where I was introduced to three dances, the last of which being East Coast Swing (or Triple Swing) which I danced gleefully and ignorantly.  The next lesson, my teacher started with ye olde ECS "since it went so well" and I. Had. Nothing.  No idea about how many chasses were involved and good God, why it is only 6 counts and what's a rock step and all that.  

Watching the sub-drinking-age-people "warm up" and "practice", it was clear that they might not know the basic in the first place.  Or care about one.

insert conversation with one of my sweet high school students from the start of the school year:

me: who's done Swing before?

girl [raises hand enthusiastically]: I have!

me: oh cool! What was it? Lindy? Jitterbug? East Coast? Just plain ol' Swing?

girl [blank stare]: ... I did aerials.

me and the crickets: ...

The kids at the Caves did know aerials, of differing difficulty and danger to others, and were intent on practicing them (thankfully off the main dance floor near the ill-attended, but delightfully inexpensive bar).  Once in awhile, they'd wander toward the dance floor, possibly with the intent of demonstrating their tricks, but were often stopped by the throng of people who were moving on the excellent wood floor.

Now many of these other people who were moving on the floor were doing something akin to the rock steps and side steps that would comprise most Swing basic steps, but without any identifiable rhythm or timing with the very obvious beat that was being used by 20 live musicians.  Let's call it "dancing".  It was often way too fast and not at all in sync with their partner, whose shoulders and elbows and wrists and side-eyes were getting a workout.

So, the majority of the fun-loving crowd at the venue could do a couple tricks, presumably with no movement to connect one trick to another, and/or had a vague knowledge of the movement involved with the favorited dance, but no idea how to execute and communicate it to another person.

And there was my question: what is partner dancing?

If it's just jumping on the floor with another person, every drunk person at a wedding is a pretty good dancer.  

Just to plagiarize myself, I propose this:

Agreement 

Whether explicitly or implicitly, when you grab hands with another person and head to the floor, you are agreeing to dance with that person for the dance that has recently started through the duration of said song (unless you're talking about Argentine Tango, but we're not).  SOMETIMES IT'S GOOD TO BE EXPLICIT. 

I'm sure you want to find out in which ways you should be explicit, but that's what a cliffhanger is for...

Reasons I'd Be A Great Mom

I have a full time job as a familial manager.  I also have a part time job as a ballroom dance instructor.  While many days, I'd love to drop that first title and go all in as a dance teacher, I don't think my young offspring are too great at cooking and driving... yet.

Some other days, the draw of being a SAHM (Stay At Home Mom, not something dirty) is strong.  There are several reasons I think I would excel when focused at this job:

1. Increased Domestic Goddess Status.  Let's not even mention how good I am at cracking eggs (the best, weird compliment I've gotten from a friend).  But my Tupperware estimation skills are unmatched: I can eyeball any leftovers and correctly chose the perfect size container to exactly fit said leftovers.  
2. Larder Expansion. I have a garden and deep freezer.  I can stockpile food like a conspiracy theorist with a d-day bunker.  In other words, I can hosts parties at any time.  With out of season produce.  
3. Life Goals. I could really buckle down and start watching soap operas and eating bon-bons like all good housewives do.
4. Better Stats.  I'm trying to raise my EOF. [Earned Offspring Fortitude] Currently, I have patience for 3.5 kids at a time.  I think with a few more hours of mental preparation available a week, I could totally up that average to 4.2 kids.  
5. Continued Domination of Crafty Nonsense.  In no time, I'd be sewing elaborate Halloween costumes (well, more elaborate ones?), yarn-bombing the foot bridge by my house (THE WHOLE THING), and making theme weeks for the WHOLE YEAR.

Do you think I'd get hired?  

Hats for Everyone

'Round about 5 years ago, I found a post on Purl Soho's blog for a simple knitted hat.   I did not know how to knit at all, but I wanted to make that damn hat.

Super Soft Merino Hats for Everyone pattern from Purl Soho

I figured my years of crocheting would somehow power me through a knitting marathon and I could whip out a family of hats in a weekend.  

But similarly to how I cannot successfully complete a ballet class after years of ballroom training, I could not knit this. damn. hat.  

I bought all the yarn, the needles (the double pointed things!), and well, just those two things, and got to work.  But the whole knitting in a circle bit was confusing and it wasn't looking right.  

After a couple tries, I stopped.  Gave up.  Said, "Knitting is not for me!" with great finality.

But these hats were haunting me.  Apparently, I subscribed to Purl Soho's mailing list, so I'd get updated versions of this same hat every year or so: New Colorways!  With Monograms! You Can Do It!

This winter, in another effort to embrace koselig and in an attempt to somewhat brand my children, the hat plan came back. 

With the website pulled up on my phone, I marched into the fancy yarn store (the Yarnery, for you locals) and announced, "I need to make this."

The quite tall, distinguished, bearded gentleman working looked at my screen and pointed me to the correct yarn.  Once I'd picked up one skein (I wasn't all in mentally at this point, despite my confidence and location), I admitted my very rough knowledge of knitting and asked what else I needed (AKA, "please help me pick out the right needles from the 15 different kinds offered and tell me what class I need to sign up for").  

The awesome guy handed me the "needles he would use", gave me the lowdown on all the classes offered (including private lessons), told me about some "magic loop" method that's "really easy", and also wrote down his favorite YouTube knitting channel (KnitFreedom, thank you!).

That night, I loaded up the YouTubes, watched three different videos (how to cast on, how to do the magic loop business, and how to purl), and started up.  And then kept going.

And then, a few days later... I finished!  But wait...

Prototype and final product

As the Sesame Street song goes, one of these things is not like the other.  The hat I had just finished is on the left, my final product is on the right.  It was kind of bell shaped and... not The Hat.

Back to YouTube to watch a tutorial on "how to knit".  Yes, maybe I should have watched that one in the first place.  

I had done something a little wonky on that first one, and while it was fine, I wanted that damn hat I had found five years ago.  

I started again and this time it worked.

It worked six more times, too! 

Life lesson [from knitting? YES, life lessons come from the coolest places):

It wasn't very fun to

a) admit defeat at something I wanted

b) be a beginner walking into a place where everyone seems to be an expert (and possibly is)

c) start over because I didn't have the correct information the first time around

It IS very fun to

a) complete a long-awaited goal

b) learn from my mistakes

c) give someone a handmade gift that they like

d) attain a new skill

What'd you learn in 2017?  And more importantly, WHAT WILL YOU LEARN THIS YEAR?