You can call me Graceful…

So these last few days have been fun. Wednesday I went country dancing with a group of people. I grew up doing 4-H (showing sheep and the like) and there was a fair bit of country dancing involved in that. So I really like country dancing, but I haven’t really gone in quite some time. So I tagged along with a group that went, and we got there in time to learn some new country swing moves. We stayed there for a few hours and I got to dance with quite a few different people, some who were pretty new to the whole dancing thing, and some of whom were much better than me. There was one guy who was an absolute tank. That is to say, he was big and very muscley. He was a good dancer, but had a strong, almost forceful lead. Now, I’m not what you would call petite. I’m tallish, and not the stick I was when I was younger. I only bring this up because I’m not normally the kind of girl that gets to do lifts and the like. The fun thing about dancing with Tank was that even though I don’t have much experience with how to do the girls part of the lifts, he still threw me around a bit. He was fully capable of just bodily picking me up and flipping me over his arm and throwing me around. I’m actually not sure I had a whole lot of choice in the matter. You just had to go with the flow and just trust that if he was capable of just picking me up, he was able to set me back down in one piece. It was fun. I got to two step with a guy that I could tell had some ballroom experience and he complimented me on my pivot turns. So all in all, I'd say I had a pretty good night. Felt maybe even a little bit graceful. Then Thursday happened...

The next day I got to babysit my nephew for a few hours. It was fun to be able to see how simple things can make a two year old so happy. He was so dang cute! This part is not particularly relevant to me being graceful or not. Just a fun side note.

I also went to see the midnight showing of the new Narnia movie. There was a small group of us that went a few hours early and played cards and such until they let us into the theatre. It’s always fun to go to the first showing of movies like this… it brings out the hard-core fans. There were quite a few that were all dressed up in their medieval garb and who had been there for much longer than any of us. Some of them even had dates!

So they let us into the theatre at about 11:00. By the time our part of the line reached the theatre, there was limited seating for the six or so we had in our group. The entire back row was pretty much empty, so we started to hustle up the stairs. I was about ten stairs in when I totally biffed it and totally face planted. Well, I didn’t actually hit my face, but it must have been pretty funny to watch, because I heard quite a few sniggers coming from the theatre. I got up and tried to do a ‘ta-daa’ kind of a thing, but when I went to go up the stairs again, I just fell right back down again. This time there was outright laughter. And I’ll admit, it was probably pretty dang funny to watch from the other side of the theatre. People running up the stairs, and one just disappears below the seats, and then right after she pops back up, she’s gone again. Anyways, I decided to take it pretty easy after that, seeing as walking was something I suddenly forgot. I pretty much slid back down to the extremely un-graceful side of the scale. Well, I made it to my seat with only superficial wounds, some of which should be pretty colors in a few days. I hit the ground hard. I really go all the way with these kinds of things. People falling down once is funny. People falling down twice, even funnier. Falling down twice and having a bruised up shin to show for it?... Well, it made me laugh. A few minutes after sitting down, I discovered that my camera had somehow fallen out of my purse. I went and looked around a bit, but it was kind of dark and I couldn’t find it. *sigh* There went my pictures with the wannabe Narnians…

I have just learned to accept that things tend to go wrong with me, or end up taking more time than they should, or whatever, and so have just learned to accept that there are some things that I can’t change. For example, I went to have a picture framed. Pretty straightforward thing for most people. I took it into the framing shop, and picked out the mat, and frame and such. They said that it would be two weeks or so. So I went back into the shop, asking for my picture but the people there had not a clue what I was talking about. I reassured them that I had dropped a job off, so they went rooting around, looking for it. They did find the picture and the order after awhile, but seeing as they had lost it, they hadn’t actually ordered the stuff, so I had to wait another few weeks. When I went back this time, they had ordered the wrong stuff, so I had to wait again. I did eventually get it, and they did a really good job, but what should have taken two weeks, ended up taking closer to two months.

This experience, and many others like it, have taught me to just expect many things to go wrong, and for things to take at least double the time normally expected. And that I shouldn’t stress over it. So as far as my newly lost camera was concerned, I decided to relax. I had looked for it, and I figured that it would either turn up, or it wouldn’t. And that nothing I could do right then would change that fact. So I just relaxed and enjoyed the movie, and sure enough… after the movie one of my buddies found it in a shadow by the stairs where I had biffed it. To make a long story just a little bit longer, everything worked out for the best, just like it always seems to.