jennanddave.com

First of all, what's with all of the pirate activity lately? Can Disney be to blame somehow?

I took my last belly dance class last December, just as the waves of exhaustion and nausea were really starting to hit full force. I welcomed the break, welcomed the extra time I got to spend laying in bed being tired and miserable. Since those symptoms don't last forever I was fully expecting to head back to dance class when they started up again in January, February at the latest. Unfortunately, Dave's Spring semester schedule had other plans that resulted in me having to bow out until the end of his classes in May. At the time, I was a little disappointed, but what can you do? By mid-February I was losing my mind, stuck in the house, slightly depressed, with nowhere to go, and nothing to do. The exercise alone would have been great, because it's awfully easy for a pregnant woman to puff up to epic proportions, especially when it comes to pant size. Mostly, though, I missed hanging out with the women I've been taking these classes with since August of 2007. When you spend all of your days chasing after or entertaining a little kid, you really start to crave interactions with people that you know through avenues that have nothing to do with children, and that's what belly dance class has given me. I've always known that that's been part of the draw, but it really hit home during the dead of winter.

One of the sessions I missed focused on an Egyptian choreography that I really wanted to learn. I mentioned it to another friend of mine who's also in the class, and because of what her schedule was like in January and February, it turns out she missed all of the classes after the first one. We decided to take semi-private lessons to learn the choreography, the first of which was this morning. It was wonderful. I wish it hadn't taken me so long to find another way to get back into it, but now I know.