5 Things About You

My sister was like that, before her stroke–but eventually she'd have had enough and exploded. Since her stroke, she doesn't get in that situation.

Great to hear! I gather no-one in your family or friends had any problem with that?

For the conference in mid-February six weeks after I'd had surgery to remove a bone spur on my right heel, I was lent a friend's scooter, which she hasn't had to use since about 2002. She warned me I'd be invisible. I thought she was exaggerating, but she was right–I go past friends who never looked my way, I'd pass a long line of folks going the other way, none of them looking at me. It was very odd. Of course, other wheeled folks and I saw each other. When it came to visiting the vendors' room, no way was I going to brave that mess of a crowded room in the scooter, so I used my cane, and was grateful beyond grateful to sit down again. I did see a lot of folk wearing “air cast” boots like the one on my right foot, and we'd exchange stories about why we had them–organ recital!

I remember you were pretty broken up about that. I'm glad there's a happy ending!

There's a song called Start Wearing Purple that struck a chord with us, and for at least 6 months we ended our routines with it. You can find it on YouTube–but beware, the video is atrocious, and the singer has a heavy Balkan-states accent.

If you visit either http://inannaraqs.com/performances.htm or http://inannaraqs.com/Gallery.htm you can see us in purple, in elemental colors, and in older garb. I'm the most rounded and oldest (in the photos where Rowan could still dance with us, before her musculo-skeletal problems caused her too much pain for dancing–she's 16 days older than I am) one, mostly in purple or teal, but the earliest gigs had me in borrowed attire in colors which I shouldn't wear (yellow not saturated enough, and other wimpy colors near my face in badly wrapped turbans), and I got stuck with the yellow elemental skirt, for which there was no matching choli, as the others wore. The near-copper colors were not coppery enough, and I hope we never have to wear them again, unless I can have a saffron-yellow choli made.

In the video of the BellyDance MommyStars (a riff on the BellyDanceSuperStars shows), I am off, off, off. I had a Costume Malfunction, and was too distracted, dammit. I got better! The young man is my son, the young girl is Stacy's daughter. Sophia, Petra's daughter, two years younger than Monica, was too shy to join the routine.

Petra's the Lead Instigator, and she and Stacy/Chiya often do duets, and dance apart from the rest of the troupe at Burner/Playa/Burning Man-linked events. Sometimes I feel left out. Since we have two additional members of our troupe, we need to get them in photos in the bios page.

I'm going to try to attach a professional photo of me wearing purple and nothing but–I'd have it as my profile shot, but too many pixels/MBs, I guess, and you couldn't see anything useful in a 1″ x 1″ of it, anyways. I have no idea how large it will display here.

[attachment=30:Anitrainpurpledancing.jpg]

and the answer is: too damn small to be of use. The text reads “I dance to feel the music playing through me–Anitra”. The project was “I dance…”, by Gladys White (thenakedartisan.com), which you might visit, and my dance name is Anitra. 10 points for anyone who can identify the reference without going to Google or Wikipedia.

That's pretty much why I said yes to my ex. She has MS too so it kind of made life a bit easier because she understood what I was going through, well I thought she did but she had NO idea! No matter how sore I was, she was worse. If my legs felt dodgy, hers were worse. If I was feeling down, her depression was worse. I really couldn't win! Looking back, I see it was a very destructive relationship but at the time I thought I was happy but everyone around me knew I wasn't but never said anything because I was good at hiding it! Looking at photos from the time I was with her, I can now see that I was miserable, my eyes were always dark and sunken but now I actually have smiling eyes again!! YAY!!

Boccia is a paralympic sport for disabled people. Kind of like bowls but sitting down. I had never heard of it before I went to volunteer centre and found out about the team in Dundee! I do their newsletter, I used to referee but it got too much and was in too much pain to bend down and measure etc. Here's a link that might explain it better

http://www.london2012.com/boccia

Thanks! We do our best. We're going to try filming our last routine for the Haunted Hafla, always in October of course, but the weekend was earlier this year. We start out very sweet (Wailing Jennys' One Voice), very tribal on the second, to a tune whose name I can never remember, and our third was naughty–to Time Warp. Most of the moves were standard Tribal moves, with a few differences thrown in. We had a blast, and so did the audience.

Aw, shucks. If I could disguise the weight showing on my face, I'd be happier, and I want to reduce that middle area (quelle suprise!). What I may never have said is that I was belly dancing in my college years, mid-70s, in a vaguely cabaret style without the sparkly bits. I mostly did something between Modern and Jazz dancing, with my own choreography, at that time. 30 years later, I start taking a BD class in the American Tribal/Improvisational Tribal style, with music and steps unlike most of what I'd done before. Petra likes drum solos, and goes for more percussive music, while I like lyrical music and more flow-y routines.

I like the way I look in the picture of the four of us, in the hated elemental color I'm stuck with–first good photo of me in decades. There are a couple of photos from this year's Haflas that I might purchase downloads for. I was really happy with the photos Grace White has taken of me, and the troupe as well. Wish I could afford a private session with her, but $ interferes.

I understand the epilepsy ban on driving, but hypertension? We had a sitter in Santa Cruz who started out life with Cystic Fibrosis, then asthma, something else I forget (migraines?), then a rare & hard to dx form of epilepsy, early nerve deafness, and one thing more. She did not have an easy time, but she did her best to live as normal a life as she could.

I didn't have a car or license until I was 29, because of the cost of car, upkeep, insurance, and gas. Two of those things I could have managed before, but not all four. I lived at the far eastern edge of LA County, where service was already sparse, but got worse and worse. Getting to the Park&Ride bus was a laugh. The first job, I went down a long straight route, until my stop, which was three blocks (with a bend, so you couldn't tell if the bus was there already or not) away from the P&R bus taking me to downtown LA. The next time, a few years later, I was at the end of the local busline, and could never tell if the first bus (the one I needed) had come & gone already, meaning 30-60 minutes wait for the next. It would drop me off at the middle of three stops, and I was never sure I'd get a seat on the first bus coming past us. We were all white-collar professional types, but there was one guy who reeked of alcohol, smoke, and his jacket wasn't cleaned often enough. Mostly, for that job, I had a carpool driver, who was quite stout (I was much more slender then), great sense of humor, and was a chemical engineer. Had great fun carpooling with him.

When I did take the bus, after I had the car, and had to work overtime, past the time the P&Rs ran, I drove to a mall about 10 miles away, where the more milk-run buses started and ended. If there were women who were going my way, I gave them rides all the way home, rather than let them wait in the bad area of town, for a local bus. I prefer to carpool, and am still happy to pick up folks (not hitchhikers) and take them where they need to go. I think I've paid off the need-a-ride karma, but now it's a matter of practicality & thrift.

However, if I'd had a job in Pasadena, it would have been the pits to get there. If I had a job in Orange County–say Fullerton or Yorba Linda, I would have had to take a bus into the LA Hub, get one going to the Orange County Hub, and then one out to Fullerton, at which point it would be lunchtime or later! Move? With what money? I wasn't making that much.

I was in a discussion about using public transit to save money and stress, where I talked about the fun of trying to get from Santa Cruz to Cupertino by mass transit, explaining just how many bus transfers that would take in the 90+ minutes in commute, vs. 35 by car. Using public transit requires that you AND your employer be along the same train/bus lines.

When we moved to SCruz, my last car had died the standard older VW death by oil leaks all over the place, and we didn't at that point, have the money to get another car for me. On days when Kurt didn't drive the carpool, I had the car, and could go “over the hill” to Silly Valley. The Santa Cruz bus system is pretty good, and the drivers are very nice, as is often the scenery between downtown SCruz and where I needed to go.

One stupid thing a lot of districts do is to try to get people out of their cars, but forget that cutting back public transit service at the same time isn't furthering their goals…