Shimmies and shovels.

This weekend was a mixture of things. On the one hand I was shoveling loads of horse poo, pig poo, chook poo and the other general unglamorous elements of lifestyle block maintenance and on the other hand I was sewing sequins, selecting jewellery and getting costumes ready for a dance show.

I am a belly dancer, have been for 9 years now, and I love it. I used to be a professional dancer and get paid (quite well) for dancing in restaurants, at weddings, parties, community events and even on telly! I decided to let professional dancing take a backseat as it started to become more of a job than a hobby and I had never intended it to be like that. So I 'retired' from professional dancing but I kept my foot in the door by continuing to attend weekly classes making the effort to do the 101.2 km round trip to class every Friday night. Every two years we have a show and this Sunday was show day. I was performing in a record-low three items, two were duos with my friend Jo and one was a group item with my shimmy sisters as I call them. They're the reason I make the trip every Friday, I love to catch up with this fun bunch of ladies. Sure we dance but we also laugh, cry, laugh 'til we cry, chat and generally have a blast in each others company. We've seen a lot of faces come and go but this bunch has been pretty consistent for the last few years.

The show finished at 4pm, I was home a couple of hours later (after a leisurely drive home and an ice-cream...oops, what happened to that diet?) and then I donned my scruffs - leggings and gumboots - whilst still wearing full stage makeup and false eyelashes and cut gorse, mowed grass and weeded out the front of the property until 8.30pm. What a great, varied day, the perfect balance of glamor and grunt! My diet isn't going too bad, other than the ice-cream, I'm feeling less bloated and I'm enjoying measuring my food.

My leg is also healing since the Nigel attack, the swelling has gone down and the bruising is showing now.


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