Riot and Frolic

a mostly ballroom dance, but also a bunch of other stuff, blog

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about

I own and rock people’s faces off teaching ballroom dancing at Dancers Studio in St. Paul, MN. My husband and I compete professionally in American style and wrangle eight children in our spare time. I’ve been teaching and competing in ballroom dancing for over 25 years and have lots of opinions on it. I am an expert by any means, but there are quite a few dancers who are better than me and I have a solid knowledge of basic technique, so suck it.

Month: July 2013

  • Short Hair, Don’t Care

    I cut my hair and lost my mind.  Was my hair keeping my brain in place? Yes. Seriously, I cut off a foot of my hair (I donated it, but damn, if that thing didn't look like a nasty old horse tail) and now have decidedly Short Hair (bobs do NOT count as short hair,…

  • The Garden of Good (and Barely Any Evil) : 2013 Part 2

    Earlier this summer, I posted about my rather benign garden.   Look at the cute little seedlings. Admire the darling lettuces. It's so tidy and meager.   BOOM.  (To be fair, the children I grew seperately and the grill is not a natural occurence.) FOUR kinds of tomatoes, of which one variety has already ripened…

  • List of Last Week’s Labors of Love

    – read Pride and Prejudice.  Accidentally.  Explanation: I like reading while eating my breakfast.  Much to the detriment of my brain cells, my table has been well-stocked with catalogs and magazines.  But late last week, GOD FORBID!, I had run out of inane material and I shuffled over to the bookshelf and grabbed the pretty,…

  • I’m Annoying

    I was talking to a new student this weekend about how much he LOVES dancing and how he practices it allthetime.   Like, allthetime allthetime.   Like, at the bathroom sink, on the way into work from the parking garage, in the grocery store, while making dinner, reading to his kids, talking on the phone.…

  • Punctuation

    It's been awhile since I wrote, so I thought I'd ease back into things by posting this weird sign I made. And I'm finally enjoying Austen.  So there. One year ago: LLLL, in which I ramble on… in a completely out-of-character fashion.

  • Living the Single Life

    Here's what I do when there's no one around (and there's no threat of anyone catching me doing any of this): I eat a huge bag of Chex Mix and a huge bag of Whoppers, and nothing else, for two days. I talk to myself… a lot. I talk to myself… loudly. I practice my…

  • A Place For Amateurs

    Maybe you're a long-time member of the thriving Twin Cities ballroom dance scene, getting bored.  Maybe you've never danced a box step in your life and are wondering where, if you ever had the inkling, one would even start such an undertaking.  Maybe you're just feeling like there's no foothold for amateurs in the state…

  • List of Last Week’s Labors of Love

    – a whole new world, like Aladdin sings about, in the bra department.   Does this qualify as TMI?  Maybe you're one of the male persuasion, or maybe you've been wearing the correct size undergarments for your adult life, BUT I HAVE NOT.   Last week, I had a little karmic alignment in which I…