crowdog66

Last night taught me two things:

a) The Dollorama Store just across the street from the Fort Rouge Leisure Centre has an AMAZING selection of merchandise, including cunning little metal tins of stick incenses and some gorgeous candle holders.

b) My body is nowhere near as limber or quick as it was in my misspent youth.

Ow, my aching back... and pelvis... and calves! Bellydancing calls on resources that I've really let slide in the last ten years. I'm going to have to put aside a certain amount of time a day to practice what I've learned, or I'm sunk as far as this class goes. Last night I was even silly enough to stand in the front row of the two rows the teacher had us students form, thus putting myself (and my mistakes) in plain sight of those in the back row. Oh, well. Nobody ever died from looking foolish.

Last night we learned two kinds of pelvic rotations, one in which the pelvis slides horizontally, the other in which the hips and the bottom of the pelvis tip up and down (depending on what point in the circle you're at). We also learned the shoulder shimmie (which makes use of the lower trapezius muscle in the back to power the forward-backward motion rather than the muscles across the top of the shoulder) and started to learn how to turn in place as we performed the pelvic rotations (not as easy as you might suppose!), as well as various methods of framing the face and moving the arms gracefully. That's a lot of isolated muscle control, some of it performed simultaneously... a great learning experience, and it's making me stretch myself, which is what I joined the class for the in first place. That, and the first thing my mother said to me upon seeing me at lunch was "You've lost weight!" -- also a great side-effect.

A longer-than-anticipated appointment early this afternoon cut into my working time, so I'm just getting started on Hardy Boys now, but I've already finished one page in half an hour. All in all, not too shabby.