Ballerina & Dog Love

Tonight I was a ballerina for the first time. And I felt stiff and ungraceful, but happy with myself for trying something new. My friend Kate, who I work with, is teaching the Beginning Ballet workshop for five weeks, so I decided to give it a go and work towards one of my dreams, a dream that really only started while working at DW -- to be a dancer. It is hard! Not only is grace and limberness needed, you need to be strong and flexible and sharp. I could feel muscles working that I haven't used, and my feet cramped every time I pointed, indicting that perhaps I don't give my feet enough loving. I am so used to muscling my way through activities, preferring the fast to the more contemplative. It is only recently that I am realizing that my body is really calling out for yoga, pilates, and now, ballet. 

Jamie is in Salt Lake City for the week, so my dinner companion was my latest book that I was close to finishing, A Dog for All Seasons. I know, I know, I write (and talk) incessantly about dogs and my dog in particular. But the reason why is that I can't quite believe that my life was dogless for so long, and I am making up for it now by falling head over heels for Olive. And reading a great deal of dog literature. I was eating broccoli and bawling. Sobbing in fact, because of course I had gotten to the end of the book, which also meant the end of Duncan's doggie life. And it didn't help that Duncan was a border collie, and that the author had loved him like a friend, child, teacher, and student. 

"And dogs show us how to live big. They do everything with gusto, whether it's drinking from the toilet to heading down the driveway for a walk they've taken a thousand times before. Every day is new, every activity is the best. In their company, we're lifted out of our human concerns and remember what it's like to be excited. But here's what strikes me as most important. And it's not about what they give us, but about something we give ourselves. We get to love a dog full out....we get to give our full heart." Patti Sherlock