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.

Category: Domesticality

  • WW…LIW…D

    I realized the other day that all my Domesticality projects (the Garbage Challenge, Advent Adventures, home improvement, homeschooling, etc.) are all based on the question "What would Laura Ingalls Wilder do?" My latest [accidental] project was having the little ladies sort their toys by type: kitchen play toys, dress up costumes, small doys (doll/toys like…

  • LLLL : Sundays

    – Things I hate on Sundays: waking up showering makeup contact lenses moving pants – watched American Hustle and then had to cleanse my Christian Bale palette with some Equilibrium. Whew. – Suit Day at our studio was excellent. I had my boys and I dress up a la [competition] mode and do a mock…

  • LLLL

    – Zoo [the youngest Bratt, coming in at 2.5 years old] corners my dad and starts talking his ear off the other night. Trying to distract her from her mission of Grampa Domination, I request her to sing a song from "Frozen". Zoo: No, I do not like the Frozen music.  It is horrible. [Mind…

  • LLLL

    – [Monday of last week] Am I in a time warp?  Is it an hour earlier than I thought?  Or an hour later?   Damn you, DLS. – What was I just doing?  Where's my coffee?  Oh, I drank it all?  Why does it smell like bread?  I'm making bread? I'm not pregnant, I just…

  • LLLL

    – I have always hated the actual post title associated with the LLLL acronym.  It's so vomitously cheesy and trite.  I did like the alliteration because alliteration, onomatopoeia, and euphemisms are awesome. – want some CSS code written?  I can do that.  Want to know how thick 1/8" is?  I can't do that.   If you've…

  • List of Last Week’s Labors of Love

    – so proud of all the dancers I know that participated in Dance Fest this weekend.  Tons of improvement from last year AND some of them even had the balls to dance out of category THE RIGHT WAY (dancing Bronze figures in Silver level heats; dancing Silver in Gold heats).  And IT WAS AWESOME.  …

  • List of Last Week’s Labors of Love

    – I still totally agree with myself about the running in winter thing because running and swearing is FUN. – did you know that is possible to take your foot off the gas pedal AND not put your foot immediately on the brake pedal?  It's true.   – if I have a day off, I will…

  • List of Last Week’s Labors of Love

    – I'm not telling you what to do, but you should listen to this, preferably with a bumpin' stereo system, a glass of Courvoisier, and someone sexy nearby:   – ditto for this:   – happy belated Valentine's Day.  I hope you did something ridiculously indulgent for yourself or someone else. – our ballroom dance…

  • Things Parents Shouldn’t Feel Bad About

    There's a lot of things to feel bad about as a parent of small children: feeding your kid the "right" foods, sending them to the "right" school, not dropping them on their heads, etc.  Here's some things you shouldn't feel bad about your child doing/having/getting: dirty fingernails. dirty faces. ah, hell, dirt IN GENERAL.  Those small…

  • List of Last Week’s Labors of Love

    – started a new running program.  This is great news for my stamina, and heart, and lungs, and muscle tone, but NOT FOR MY FACE. depressed alien gets it [- DepressedAlien.com is hilarious.  Check it out.] Because who DOESN'T start running when it's NEGATIVE TWO DEGREES OUTSIDE?       I DON'T KNOW!!!     –…