Big Sky II

And then I was on my way home, my time in the desert…over. For the moment.

It’s six months later. It’s still with me. I’m off to travel this weekend, leaving family and house, but for joyous reasons, a wedding of two friends. It’s only for the weekend and the camera goes with me, because whenever I am stupid enough to travel without it, I immediately want it.

So I don’t travel without it anymore.

I’m firmly in the grip of a lot of Change with a capital C right now and that’s also okay. In less than a month, I turn 43.

I don’t even know where to start with any of it to talk about it. All the balls are currently in the air, so there’s that. I’m waiting on things and responses. I’m moving forward on my next ridiculous large set of goals and the fire is back in my belly, as I knew it would be. The weather has finally broken and running isn’t the misery that it was before.

If I had more brain, I’d break it down, but I don’t. Suffice to say, the usual full tilt boogie is going on over here. It’s not too shabby.

Originally published at ANGELA N. HUNT. You can comment here or there.

Mouse Ballerina

So, as most of you know, twice a year, I get to indulge my love of theater and dust off my old stage management skills and spend the day surrounded by baby ballerinas.

It’s three months after the fact, but here is the Mouse, with me early at the Santa Monica Bay Women’s Club, prepping the stage for Miss Marie’s Academy of Dance Spring Recital.

I have years of these photos now and recently I went back over and found myself wondering what was in my eye. I know some of these girls so well now. I’ve watched them from gangling, round-bellied baby ballerinas, to beginning fledgling dancers, or in the case of Aspen, the beginning glimmer of an accomplished dancer, setting out into the world of professional performance as a dancer and high wire acrobat at a local circus.

The transformation in these girls is profound.

No less profound in my Mouse.

She’s not always exactly had “fun”. I’m one of those parents who says you can’t just up and quit in the middle of everything. You stick things out till the end of a cycle. And every session I ask her, “Do you want to dance with Miss Marie again?”

And every time, she says, “Sure,” oh-so-nonchalant. Because gods forbid I should know how much she loves Miss Marie and really loves to dance.

It’s okay.

Her secret is safe with us, yeah?

Originally published at ANGELA N. HUNT. You can comment here or there.