You know you’re starting to recover when you wake up and think, “Guess I should go brush my teeth” instead of “Oh ye unkind gods, whhhhyyyyyyyyyy?!”
Monthly Archives: December 2014
Ballet Squid Chronicles: Pathetic Attempts at Unitard Photos
So I bought a Eurotard unitard to go with the “Keep Calm and Rond de Jambe” shirt that Kelly gave me because I want to write a review of said uni.
Turns out is actually kind of hard to get good unitard pictures in my house, and that I’m kind of terrible at it anyway.
Take, for example, the following:
In my messy washroom. At least I had the sense to move the Catbox?
This was the best shot I got of my legs. Probably the best shot, period, because of course it is. Everyone loves pictures of someone else’s bathroom.
Oy vey. Love the placement of the J-trap and the, um, wild Bohemian hair moment I’m having?
So I tried again in the bedroom. I had to place pillows in front of the bedstead so my legs were visible, since that’s kind of the whole point.
I did not actually intend this to be a picture of my lower torso. Awkward.
(I might be able to crop it for use in my Amazon review. Maybe.)
So I tried a little passé.
Not my best moment.
You guys, it’s hard to passé whilst operating a phone, even by voice-command, even if you don’t take it to relèvé. This is The. Worst. Passé. (Case in point: turnout weak, working leg too low and overcrossed, and let’s not even talk about my swaybacked posture). If I’d tried relèvé, I wouldn’t be writing this, because I would have face-planted into a mirror and died.
Also, the camera angle makes my legs look like they’re two different lengths and circumferences and stuff. At least it’s a half-way decent picture of the unitard itself.
I figured I’d try just a plain old relaxed first position. Chopped off my own head. Maybe that’s for the best?
In the end, this is the only half-way decent shot I managed:
Whee. One whole leg.
So there you have it.
Exciting pictures of my unitard. Le sigh.
Clearly, I am going to have to get someone who knows what they’re doing to take review pictures for me.
My only consolation is that the pictures Denis took for me were even worse. I won’t saddle you with those.
Anyway, I tried a little aerobic dance workout in these. So far, so good. I don’t want to take them off, because they’re so comfy, so that’s a good sign.
More Cooking with ADHD: Do I Need To Write A Cookbook?
Recently I’ve been trawling for ADHD-friendly cookbooks.
The only problem is that, in essence, when you combine the terms “ADHD” and “Cookbook,” what you generally get is some variant of “Feingold Diet.”
Not that there’s anything fundamentally wrong with the Feingold plan: it’s nutritionally sound and seems to work pretty well for some kids — but that’s where the problem comes in. Essentially every Feingold resource is designed for parents without ADHD who have kids with ADHD. The same goes for just about every cookbook that aligns itself with ADHD.
The problem is, ADHD isn’t just a problem for kids (the same can be said for related conditions, like autism). Kids with ADHD often grow into adults with ADHD — and then we’re kind of stuck, cookbook-wise.
Adhering to the Feingold diet and any number of similar plans requires, more or less, making everything from scratch, at home — and it’s more complicated than many of us adults with ADHD can easily manage on our own.
I keep envisioning a cookbook — maybe even a life-management book — based on the SQUIRREL! principle. If I can get distracted by the proverbial SQUIRREL! mid-page and still re-find my place within a second or two, a given resource will probably work for me. If I can’t, it won’t. End of story.
Here’s the thing, though: I’m not really a food writer (Though I could be! I like food, I like writing, and I’m passably decent at both, so why not?), and I don’t really think of myself as someone who’s terribly representative of ADHD. I am a complex tangle of neurological anomalies and their attendant diagnoses. I am still not really clear as to whether I’m more “Asperger’s with Hyperactivity” or “ADHD with Asperger’s” (technically, I’ve been diagnosed with both — but I’m not sure that makes sense; I suspect it’s a question of mistaking facets of one thing for whole,separate things, like the blind men with the elephant). And, of course, there’s the whole Bipolar thing, too.
I suspect, though, that diagnostic complexities might not really matter, in this case. I suspect the challenges that I face in the kitchen might be pretty universal for those of us who are easily distracted, are prone to procrastination, and can’t sit still. I have a feeling, even, that some of my strategies might work for people with difficulties similar to mine.
So now I’m pondering the idea of creating a cookbook, mostly so I can have a cookbook that works for me, but also so other people can benefit from it. Assuming there’s not one out there that already meets the need.
I plan keep looking for an existing “Cooking with SQUIRREL!” cookbook — but if I don’t find one, maybe I’ll create one. What do you think, Internet? Is this something the world actually needs?
Cooking with ADHD: Waffle The World and Bake It On A Pan
I’m a fan of abusing the waffle iron and/or the Foreman grill. Basically, I feel that if it’s relatively flat and you can bake it, you can probably iron it, too — and ironing it will take less time and won’t make your house stiflingly hot in the summer.
Imagine, then, my delight at discovering the “Will It Waffle?” blog. A gentleman called Dan has written an extensive blog and now an entire book about cooking things with a waffle iron — things like pumpkin custard (yes, please) and mashed potatoes (sure, I’ll try that, too!). Some of his recipes are on Serious Eats, and you can find his book on Amazon and in local bookstores.
A lot of Dan’s recipes look pretty ADHD-friendly: by necessity, anything you’re going to waffle is something you’re probably going to be able to mix up in a bowl, and since waffle irons don’t really support complicated cooking techniques, the cooking part should be pretty simple, too.
Likewise, while I haven’t seen his book, an unscientific sampling of the recipes on the blog (check out the Blog Archive) suggests that the whole concept is pretty ADHD-friendly. Check out Waffled Cornbread, for example: 7 ingredients, 4 steps, printable on a single sheet of paper.
No page turns! That’s important. I don’t know if this is true for everyone with ADHD, but a recipe with a page turn is much harder for me than one without (especially if the page turn comes at some critical point in the instructions and requires me to flip back and forth).
In a similar vein, Dan’s blog led me to Sheet Pan Suppers, another collection of recipes that doesn’t leave the beleaguered household cook with a million dishes to do on Thursday night. That’s a big win right there.
I’m trying to expand my repertoire of weekday-evening meals (because while I’m happy with a constant rotation of protein, salad, potato or bread, Denis isn’t), and Sheet Pan Suppers looks pretty promising. Some of the recipes involve slightly more complex instructions, but quite a few of them have only a few steps that don’t read like paragraphs. Pretty cool stuff.
I plan to begin exploring this book once we’ve eaten up all the leftovers from the Family Holiday Shindig (which went brilliantly well). I’ll need to pick up a half-sheet pan. Bizarrely, we don’t own one — Denis likes to bake cookies on pizza stones, and I’ve been meaning to buy a half-sheet pan since I moved in and still haven’t done so.
Instead, I’ve been muddling through, substituting rectangular cake pans when I’ve really needed to roast something that would work better on a sheet. Since I do all the cooking, it seems reasonable to acquire tools that work for my work style and maybe get rid of some of the ones that don’t (because, seriously, we have a ton of kitchen stuff I don’t use, ever).
I’ll report back on Sheet Pan Suppers as I begin to use it.
In other news, I’m still recovering from Winter Plague #2, but I’m mostly human again now. I still have a lingering cough that sounds a bit croupy, so I’m not really back in action bike-wise yet. Ballet resumes a week from Monday, so I will be able to spend the next week bringing myself back online exercise-wise using the dreaded Ballet Conditioning Workout and Bollywood Burn.
Happy Holidays!*
Lights found here: http://www.christmasnewyearwallpapers.com/christmas-lights-clipart.html
Thanks, Innertubes!
In other news, here’s what I got for Christmas from our favorite Kelly!
Keep Calm and Rond de Jambe, Everybody!
Also, for whatever reason, my neck looks awesome and stuff in this picture.
I am well on the road to recovery from Winter Plague #2.
Notes
*Yes, I said it! “Happy Holidays,” because I don’t know if you, beloved reader, are Atheist, Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, Wiccan, or beyond. Lots of religions (and non-religions) have celebrations this time of year, and it would be rude of me to assume that I know your religious preferences without asking you (if I do know your religious preferences, though, I’ll make sure to offer an appropriate holiday greeting if we meet in person!).
Ballet Squid Chronicles: Ballautopilot
Today, halfway through some barre combination or another, I suddenly found myself doing something completely different.
Why?
Because the beginning of the combo was exactly like one we often do in Claire’s class, but the last third or so was different. Apparently my ballet-autopilot — ballautopilot, if you will — had kicked on. (Please tell me I’m not the only person whose ballautopilot that sometimes goes awry!)
The same thing happened again, incomprehensibly, as we were going across the floor. This was Essentials, so the allegro combo was simple: glissade-pas de chat(1), glissade-pas de chat, tombé-pas de bourree-glissade assemblé.
For some reason, my ballautopilot decided it needed to end with “glissade-sisson,” even though nothing ends like that, ever. So there’s no rational explanation for that one, except that apparently my legs like to sisson, and I was thinking about something else (specifically, my arms).
In other news, I managed another of those lovely and enjoyable double-pirouettes that happen when you get most of the way through your first rotation and then go, “Hm, I think I’ll just go on around again.” And then you do, and then you close back and look like you’re an awesome dancer when, in fact, you’re much more half-baked than usual this week because you’ve been out of class so much lately.
In still other news, this week I decided to try a fouetté en tournant, just to see if I could do it, in my kitchen (because everyone knows that the kitchen is where you practice your turns).
You guys, it turns out my kitchen is not actually big enough for that. Whipped out the leg, and WHAM! Right into the stove(2).
So I guess I won’t be practicing fouettés en tournants in my kitchen anymore. I will have to add them to the (ahem) rotation (see what I did there?!) of turns I practice before class, like the stepover-stepover-pique-pique combination from Tawnee’s class that’s one and a half piques too long for my kitchen, no matter how diagonally I travel.
In different news entirely, my husband is incredibly sweet and, as a surprise, took me to see Big Hero 6 today. It was brilliant, and if you can, you should run out right now and see it before its theatrical run closes. And if you are feeling weepy this week (which some of us do sometimes, just sayin’), I recommend that you bring a packet of tissues and a friend.
Notes
- I would like to point out that my glissade-pas de chat sub-combo looked stellar today, unlike my grand battement, which involved high extensions and a jiggly, jiggly, jiggly core. Must be jelly, &c.
- Fortunately, this was loud, but not painful in the least. I specifically planned it so I wouldn’t crack my leg on the dishwasher door, which would probably have hurt, since said dishwasher door was propped open to let the dishes cool off, with its pointy edges out and ready to rip my legs off.
Non-Ballet, Non-Bike Things
Finally taking a break to do a little drawing. He’s a young Welsh section A stallion, partway finished. He’s really just a sketch, but he’s turning out so well I rather wish I’d thought to give him a setting. I suppose it’s not too late!
Small World
I’m apparently cyber-stalking New Haven Ballet at the moment (read: poring over their website, apparently in an attempt to avoid finishing my math review?) and I noticed that one of their instructors, Christopher DeNofrio, used to dance and teach at Louisville Ballet (and was, in fact, the Assistant Director of our school at one time!). That was before I moved here, so I wouldn’t have known him, but still pretty neat stuff.
Wait, what’s that sound?
Oh, it’s just the ballet world shrinking again*.
Notes
*In case you’re wondering, it usually sounds a lot like Swan Lake, but right now it sounds suspiciously like the Nutcracker.
Ballet Squid Chronicles: Saturday Class, Now With 100% More Kelly!
We did Essentials this morning, which was enough for my recovering respiratory system. Our friend Kelly came and was able to hang in throughout class. Yay!
Barre was lovely. A week off the bike means my hip flexors were nice and loose, so I had high extensions and an effortless full left split. It was just like, “Oh, look, here I am on the ground!” (The right was pretty close, but not all the way there).
Except for chaînés across the floor, we didn’t do turns today (not even at the barre). Just little jumps followed by grand jetés. The grand jetés were fun, as always, and I focused on keeping my upper body together and not going all squidly.
At one point one of the girls whose names I don’t know because I’m a horrible person and I went together, perfectly synchronized but on opposite legs (this makes sense to you if you’re a horse person :D). We looked really cool in the mirror, even if it wasn’t actually something we planned (I started on the wrong foot, somehow).
I was reminded of that cool synchronized dressage drill where you and a partner canter (with lots of collection, ideally) down the centerline on opposite leads and turn off in opposite directions at C (looks even cooler in counter-canter). Ballet: it’s people-dressage!
Margie wanted us to focus on really traveling in our leaps. I didn’t quite have the aerobic capacity today to manage to clear the studio in two jetés, but I got across in three every time. A couple even looked pretty 😛
In other news, my chaînés are magically becoming solid. This feels awesome, because chaînés are basically my nemesis, you guys, and also something I shouldn’t struggle with at this point. I made the mistake of noticing this during my first pass and promptly ceasing to spot halfway across the floor. (You know how it is: “OMG I’M DOING IT AAAAAAAUGH!”)
Fortunately, because I have bizarre ear problems sometimes and thus have tons of practice moving while dizzy, I managed to finish my pass and not fall down at the end, even if I did wind up tracking a bit diagonally. So that was cool, too. Thereafter, I paid attention to my spot.
For what it’s worth, while Kelly would disagree, I think she looked very good considering that this was her first class back after a significantly longer break from dancing than mine.
She has beautiful feet, and her leaps may not yet have been super high, but she did them with straight knees and pointed toes. She also has a very graceful way of carrying her upper body and arms. Her musical theater (like, actually-performed-in-New York musical theater!) and modern dance backgrounds come through there. She’s also not at all afraid to ask questions in class.
I am happy to have Kelly in class and very much looking forward to watching her re-emerge as a dancer. Exciting stuff!
danseur ignoble 