The Iliotibial Band is playing at my house

Today I was confronted with an important choice. A choice that seriously tests my values. A true form versus function kind of deal. Because my chronic knee problems went from manageable to consistently gasp-inducing and mobility-impairing, I have returned to the kindly people who took my damaged back and made it all better to see if they can work some of their mojo on my loathed lower joints.

The absolutely wonderful news is that they can fix me. I just have to actually do what that trainer told me to do and teach my legs to work in a new and exciting way. An efficient one. I could go into the multi-factorial explanation of what's going on, excite you all with the mess I've gotten into with a tight sacroiliac (which I've learned is, like, a million times better than a loose one, though I really need to learn to let mine slide), bum muscles that wouldn't know how to fire even if they were given first chair on the firing squad, my new worst enemy and best friend the iliotibial tract (which apparently should slide over the quadriceps, but mine is actually stuck in some places, ew) and my quadriceps, which think that nothing can happen in my body without them flexing, which wouldn't be so bad if they would only do it in unison. Yes, if they did that, then my knees would actually slide into the track they're supposed to go on. That'd be keen and there'd be less swelling as a result I'll bet you.

A nice mess I am. But a mess that can be fixed through some hard work and, sadly, some sacrifice. It was more than gently suggested to me that my prognosis and long-term mobility would be dramatically improved if I stopped wearing high heels. I feel I must point out that I went to this physiotherapy appointment today wearing black, knee-high, three-inch, stiletto boots. Really, really pretty ones. Pretty ones I may not wear again.

I know, I know that high heels put so much pressure on my knees. They're also terrible for my hips and general posture. I know. I know. But my god I look fantastic in them. I have always been proud of the fact that I have worn high heels in spite of the fact that I'm tall. Clearly empowerment has it's costs.

I'll try not to whine about this too much and just get it out of my system now. Healthy joints are much more important than cute shoes. Even I know that it's a no brainer. I just don't need shopping for shoes to suck more. Not only do I have to find a size 11, but now it has to be of a sensible height. I don't know if anyone with normal sized feet can understand how hard it is to meet those criteria and actually wear a shoe that is attractive as well. *sniff*

Pity party over, it's a change I will make. I will do whatever I need to do to stay limber and mobile. I want to be able to run, jump and dance for as long as I can. Cute shoes just don't compare to how good those things make me feel. A least I can wear sneakers for hip hop.

Today's sing-a-long song: "Wake up call" by Maroon 5

HRH

Persona

Some people thrive on the spotlight and it's amazing to see them just turn it on. it goes beyond introvert and extrovert. I know incredibly shy people who become entirely different creatures the moment they hit the stage. There are also people who are always on. I am neither of those people. I am pretty much always me, all the time. This is why I am not an artist (I mean, there's also the talent and dedication thing, which I have a smattering of, but not enough to make it a career). There is nothing for me to turn on, as I have no switch.

Throughout my life I've had opportunities to perform. It's been a long time since I've been on a stage, but for awhile there, it was a pretty normal place for me to be. Of course, 95 per cent of my stage time was logged playing double bass, comfortably nestled within an orchestra of 80. I stopped playing the piano just as I was moving into the part of life when I was becoming really self-conscious. There is evidence of me performing alone, but I was too young to really get it.

There was one foray into acting, which I was told I was good at, but that was only because I was personally attached to the narrative, so it was more like retelling than pretending. Singing in a choir is fine. Singing on my own, anywhere other than the car or a karaoke bar can be a vomit-inducing experience and an unintentional, terror-driven vibrato. I've done it and survived, and in my mind, I'd love to do it, yet do I ever? No.

Dancing has always been in groups. And while I've never been particularly good at it, it's always brought me out of my shell more than anything else. And that's not particularly far. Even now, where I'm just taking classes at a gym, with no possibility of anyone outside of my classmates seeing me dance, I've taken to dabbling in a pre-class drink, just to chill me out. Dancing in clubs doesn't even count as it was always part of crowd in the dark. I hate to admit that I fall into the category of that "dance like no one is watching" life affirmation phrase, but I am compelled to admit that it would be nice if I could do that.

I mentioned this to a colleague who is a Belly Dancer and she suggested that I create a performing persona so that I don't have to have a drink before I go to dance class. She recently did that and it really freed her.

So I'm trying to craft a persona. One I can put on when I'm out in a club or in classes when I'm taking things way too seriously. For when people are watching. For fun. Really, it's why I play music or move. Maybe if I have a performer-like identity I can show people the fun that I have in my head. Oh the joys of a rich inner world.

It's not that I'm unhappy with who I am and what it is to be me. It's just that sometimes, who I am is tremendously practical, kind of shy and prone to caring too much about what people think. There have been times in my life where I've been uninhibited. As uninhibited as I get. And I think the persona should come from there.

I think she will wear more hats that I do.

HRH

Not quite good enough for Napoleon Dynamite

So I'm one of five people on the planet who haven't seen Napoleon Dynamite. I am okay with this. The trailer made me uncomfortable and I am overcome with the desire to hurt the character every time I see him. These things made me think that 120 minutes of him would do really bad things to my blood pressure.

Even though I haven't seen the film, it doesn't mean I haven't seen/heard a lot of the jokes from it. The "Vote for Pedro" T-shirts, the chapstick and, sadly, the dance sequence.

Normally having a dance sequence in a film would make it near and dear to my heart, but this one annoys me. I will try to be fair, though. Napoleon is a doing a pretty good job, and the fact that he learned to dance in two days watching a video and actually won a student body president election with it, well that's very nice for him.

It's just that Canned Heat is big song for me, strange as that is. It became a bit of a personal anthem in my last year of University and I have so many fond memories of dancing to it or listening to it in the car with my friends. I guess the song is era defining for me.

I guess it's not the movie itself that bugs me, but the fact that everyone but me and the four other people who haven't seen it think of Napoleon Dynamite when the song comes on. I think of the awesome final sequence for Center Stage (you can fast-forward to 6:38 to see the relevant portion if the entire ballet doesn't interest you) or of my friends and what dancing to that song meant for us, and in comparison, Napoleon Dynamite seems, I dunnno, unworthy.

I don't know why it took me three years to figure out why it bothered me as much as it did.

HRH

Ballerina, you must have seen her dancing in the sand

Today is a bit of a sad day for me. My six week dance class comes to an end. I have had just a ridiculous amount of fun doing this. I've also been consistently sore (seriously, how much does a person have to work out to stop feeling stiff all the time!), but I just can't bring myself to care.

It's really taken over my mind in a lot of ways. I've found myself dancing in streetcar vestibules in the morning when there's no one else around. I've been dancing in the washroom at work (mirrors are so handy), dancing at home if I'm alone and listening to this Ciara/Chamillionare song so much that I've actually gone from actively hating Chamillionare to a state of general apathy. Scary stuff.

Of course, loving an MTV dance class still doesn't explain why I can't stop listening to the Justin Timberlake CD. If you listen really hard you can hear 21-year-old me weeping somewhere because of that last line.

Anyway, dancing = good. I may never be great at it, but it's so much fun that I find it hard to care.

Today's sing-a-long song: "Tiny Dancer" by Elton John

HRH

Just one more song

Last night, M, Beltzner, Dawn and I attended the wedding of our undergrad partner in crime, Jon Krashinsky. Jon is one of those characters who leaves an indelible impression on you. He is just so fantastically alive and that delicious mix of mischievous yet inherently good. While our paths have crossed occasionally over the last eight years, it's as though it's only been a few days since we were last together.

It was really wonderful to see him so happy yesterday and to see how totally head-over-heels in love he is with his wife, Kelly. He's found the best thing ever, the thing that I wish for everyone in their relationships; someone who you can really be yourself with and be loved for it.

While his wedding was a great chance to spend a couple of moments with him, it was also a gathering of other friends from Golden Words. Kind of a warm up party for the 40-year reunion next weekend in Kingston. I don't know what it is about that time in my life or what it is about the people that were part of GW while I was there, but that bond, it's just awesome.

There was a moment while Matt Blair was DJing and he kept on playing songs we danced to night after night at the Trash, that I felt kind of like I was 21 again. Let's just ignore the horrible old lady implications of that remark and bask in that feeling a little.

I know that life then wasn't ALL about laughing at Press Nite (TM) and getting lost in the music at a club. There was drama, lots of it and stress too, but it was different. Not better, just different. I don't know. For me the day I really committed to the paper life started its uphill trajectory. I'll always feel fondly for the beginning of the really good.

Dancing to the songs that are now considered retro (ouch!) and having M, Mike, Dawn, Jon, Blake and Matt there to party with was the perfect slice of nostalgia that I needed to prepare me for next weekend. And not to sound like too much of a lame oldie, but for a bunch of 30-year-olds, we've still got it.

Today's sing-a-long song: "Hey boy, Hey girl" by The Chemical Brothers

HRH

Falling apart in half time

This evening I started one of my "holy crap depression sucks, let's be done with it" projects. I haven't actually been depressed since the end of January, but I'd made these plans then, so it seemed like a good idea to stick with them.

So I just finished my first MTV Choreography class. One hour of very fast, bootie-tacular moving. I'm actually pretty pleased with myself. Not only did the instructor (who is completely wonderful) call me out for doing a couple of moves especially well(yay!), but by the end of the class I was doing a sequence of moves I was sure I would never figure out.

Like a good type A I have already downloaded the song we're learning our routine to so I can practice in private moments I steal away. I should really just be continually enrolled in dance classes of some kind because dancing and learning routines makes me ridiculously happy.

They also make me kind of sore, but that's just age and being out of practice.

Today's sing-a-long song: "Get up" by Ciara

HRH

Very Victoria

When M and I were in Italy and we had collapsed in our hotel rooms for the evening, we would watch at LOT of MTV Italia. We're video junkies and our Italian being as pitiful as it was, MTV was one of the stations we could kind of comprehend.

Every night at 9 there was this show on called Very Victoria where this very cute Italian woman named Victoria Cabello, who has a most-awesome Wiki entry, would interview Italian celebrities. There would also be the requisite silly gags and risque segments involving people in their underwear that you can only see on TV in Europe or maybe also in Quebec.

Anyway, she was cute and well dressed. Her set looked like it had jumped out of Moulin Rouge and she was a very un-bimbo like TV presenter. A complete and total rarity of modern Europe.

We watched a lot of this show, even though we had NO idea what was going on. I was always mesmerized by the opening dance sequence. First because of the clothes and shoes and second because of the charmingly bad dancing. Every time I see it I am tempted to change the shape of my bangs.



Today's sing-a-long song: "Ruby Blue" by Roisin Murphy

HRH

Finely filtered

Geez! We're well into December and I'm just getting around to the first blog of the month now. Something is truly amiss. I don't know why, but I haven't had a lot to say for awhile. Blog posts occur to me only when I am as far away from my computer as time and space allows. It would be really lame to have this fizzle out when I'm a mere six months away from this blog being a whole five years old.

I suppose because I've been at this for some time, I'm less inclined to just blather about all the things I've blathered about before. I suppose I could talk about all the cooking I've been into of late, or how I find it perpetually annoying that hand lotion bottles always develop a crust around the spout and I invariably cover myself in hand cream when I try to use force to get it out of the way. I mean, isn't that just the most fascinating thing EVER.

Indeed, I could regale the public about my latent fears of pregnancy and home ownership (though both seem to be ultimately positive and inevitable things), my growing problem with buying clothing at Lululemon, how I'm trying to learn all the choreography to the Thriller video, about my recent experiments (and total failure) in do it yourself home hair glossing, how totally fucking gorgeous the Christmas tree is this year and how I could actually send out the wedding thank you cards if my husband would just finally print the darn labels.

Stuff is going on. I'm good. We should really get together for tea sometime. I'm finding the Chelsea show is better in person these days than online.

Today's sing-a-long song: "I don't feel like dancing" by the Scissor Sisters

A new-found respect

...Or as much respect as I can muster for strippers.

I am in pain today. An altogether different pain than last weekend (phew), but pain none the less.

Yesterday Natasha and Dawn planned a wonderfully fun "stagette" day for me. I was really smart in my bridesmaid choosing I have to tell you. Everything we've done has been fun and not at all embarrassing. Which is impressive since I spent two hours yesterday at a pole dancing class.

Natasha picked me up early yesterday afternoon with her only instructions being "bring workout clothes." So I did and she drove me to Flirty Girl Fitness, possibly the nicest fitness studio I've ever been to. The place was gorgeous and everyone was exceptionally nice. The three of us were signed up for a pole dancing class which the studio describes as "a phenomenal total body workout that builds fabulous muscle tone. Totally hot. Outrageously fun. Prepare to leave this class a Diva!"

And they were totally right. It was so much fun, but so much hard work. I used muscle groups I have possibly never used before and have a new appreciation for the physical strength involved in wrapping yourself around a pole gracefully and trying to look sexy at the same time. Not easy, but very fun to try to do, especially in the company of your best friends.

The rest of my stagette entailed a very yummy dinner in the company of even more friends, cocktails at the very posh Ultra Lounge and then we contemplated dancing at Velvet Underground, but the DJ wasn't feeling our vibe. Which is really fine, since two weeks from now I will get to be the DJ and dance to all the music I really want to hear.

So all in all, this whole pre-wedding girly stuff has been super awesome. Fun, classy, not uptight and I managed to make my way through it without having to be out in public wearing a veil covered in phalluses (we saw one girl wearing one last night, poor thing) nor having to enjoy the special humiliation that comes with having to wear all the bows from your presents on your head. Thank you to all, but primarily Dawn and Natasha, for making the lead to up the wedding so completely awesome.

Today's sing-a-long song: "Don't Cha" by The Pussycat Dolls

HRH

Random things

As a child I used to dance around my parents living room to George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, all 14 minutes of it. There was an elaborate routine that I can still see in my head every time I hear the song. Classic Gershiwn was one of the first CDs we bought (after Beatles for Sale). I really am fortunate for having a family that would not only let me move furniture dance and around the house, but would also be kind enough to not insist upon watching.

Did you know that the last time I bought stationary for myself was nine years ago when I was in studying art history in Italy? It was the marble textured type of paper that they make in Venice and Florence. It was blue, green and lovely. But I haven't had to buy any since because wonderful people keep buying me stationary. And not just plain old stationary, but stationary that is completely perfect for me. Cards with stylized little fashionistas, art as make-up, cats, flowers... all lovely. I largely have Kari and Wendy to thank for this. I also have to thank them for keeping me well stocked in good reading.

A woman at the gym asked me what kind of face wash I was using and it resulted in me giving her a 10 minute skin care/cosmetics consult. A middle aged asian woman I'd never met before. Things like this happen to me a lot and I have no idea why. I suppose it appeals to my ego, that people think that I look like I know what I'm doing. I guess looking like you know what you're doing is sometimes 60 per cent of actually doing it.

Today's sing-a-long song: "Let Go" by Frou Frou

HRH

Wishing there was a short word to describe the Home Alone face

M just went out for the evening looking like the Czech Justin Timberlake (it's a good thing, people should wear hats more). Sadly because of an ass-kicker of a week and an exercise in sleep deprivation I am unable to join him as the Canadian and bearing-no-resemblance-to Cameron Diaz. When I get no sleep, my legs turn into jello and my eyes become rimmed with circles so dark I have all the goth girls trembling with envy. It's neither mobile or pretty, so I sent my beloved out to enjoy a festive winter's night on his own.

Being home alone affords me the opportunity to do things without embarassing myself. Not that M isn't amazingly accepting of the crazy concoction that is me, but somehow it's just easier to listen to Madonna or Kelly Clarkson CDs without feeling like I've become completely uncool.

Also, if my legs weren't a crampy useless mess, I would most likely be dancing around the house. I'm one of those people. Always have been. That girl who sings and dances in front of the mirror and shrieks in terror when someone walks in on her.

HRH