Wow it’s been a while since my last post. Let’s catch up.
Dance: still doing ballet, although I’m taking a few months off classes so I can condition. Working a lot on turnout, so literally every day I just do slow plies in second – 20 in the morning, 20 in the evening. Interspersed with single leg raises to strengthen ankles and practice balance. It sucks, and progress is glacial, but it exists. I’m also learning to DIY some massage to relieve tight muscles and unlock more turnout.
Writing: miraculously, there’s been some. Finished yet another revision to draft 1, almost done with draft 2, and made inroads on draft 3 (which was commissioned). Restarted outlining of the novel that won’t die, and further than before. Just need to decide how the Final Confrontation shakes down.
Bean: Getting bigger, funnier, and more stubborn by the day. Now potty-trained!
Other: I took a wonderful* vacation last month! London, Amsterdam, and a handful of cities in Germany. I was feeling very burned out and also stuck on my personal writing. One day in a London hotel shook something loose and I came back with 8k more words than I’d left with. (They’re fic, but that’s fine.) I walked everywhere, drank delicious beer, did not eat nearly enough Nordsee, and somehow muddled through Germany without a single person trying to talk to me in English. There were a few points in Saarland, most notably in a Vapiano**, where I later realized I should have used my French, which while not fluent is WAY better than my German. Oh well!
* The one fly in the ointment was getting TOTALLY screwed by not realizing that Eurostar is basically a small airport, not your usual train station. Long story short, I missed my train to Amsterdam, which was the last train out that night, and I was stuck in London. Fortunately, a friend is in London and after she was finished laughing at me, she let me buy her dinner and crash on her couch. I did waste one night at a very nice hotel in Amsterdam, but hey, more time with your friends is priceless.
** I had a HORRIBLE time ordering my food and was wondering if my German*** had truly been that bad. Then the girl after me ordered in rapid fire French and my server/cook responded similarly. So I won’t blame it on myself that time. But man. I could have saved us both so much stress with a je voudrais instead of ich möchte!
*** “Kara why are you learning German” I’m not. Husband speaks German to Bean, and I’m picking it up from sheer osmosis. My vocabulary is mostly suited to working at a daycare, but Bean is quite into demanding food, so I know how to order a meal … more politely than she does.