These Aren’t My Breasts, Just The Bags They Came In.

I was not nearly as sore this week following belly dancing class.  Mostly just in the calves and feet from all the tip-toe dancing.  As I mentioned in the previous blog, we only have three classes left of beginning choreography class.  I am going to find out what the “Belly Dancing Workout Class” entails and will consider signing up if it looks like it might be fun.  My Mother suggested signing up for some other type of dance exercise class (such as hip hop dancing).  If a hip hop dance exercise class involved popping in the Chaka Khan CD and just letting lose with freestyle dancing, I would be all for it, but I fear that it would require more choreography and I think after belly dancing 101 is over, I will look for something a little less “learn the movesy” - if you get my drift.  I actually considered looking for a river dancing class.  The Irish set dancing does not appeal to me at all – it is really just square dancing.  It involves all kinds of swinging your partner round and round and do sa doing – not so much my gig – too many opportunities to cause damage to other people and I don’t want that on my conscience.  Now, river dancing, you say, is quite difficult and very HIGH energy.  I would only embark on such an adventure if I found a class that was really designed to just teach you some of the kicks and stomps, etc. and not to make you an expert river dancer.  I’m not sure if such a class exists – but I will search around. 

I think I mentioned a few weeks ago that one of the CONTRACTORS I temporarily work with has been doing Match.com (for those of you of an older – less virtual generation, Match.com is an on line dating site).  I haven’t done Match.com.  I have, however, done “eHarmony” (dating website), "It’s Just Lunch” (actual matchmaking agency) and “Hurry Date” (where men and women meet and have mini 8 minute dates to see if they like each other).  The eHarmony was like a full time job – you constantly have to monitor the site to see who the system serves up for you (as you cannot pick your own matches – the system is all knowing and can find your perfect match…. if you just *believe*).  If you don’t monitor the site constantly the matches can pile up and it just becomes too overwhelming – kind of like when you go into a restaurant and the menu is 10 pages long.  Instead of saying “oh boy, look at all these wonderful choices” you sort of stare blankly at the menu without seeing a single entre and then your brain explodes just a little and you order a salad because it’s on the first page.  It’s Just Lunch boasts itself as being a true “matchmaking agency” – learning all about you and matching you with the perfect person.  In reality it is a “send every man who has signed up on a date with you because there are 10 women to every man” agency.  Not quite the fine-tuning I was hoping for.  I paid $1400 for that “special treatment.”   Hurry Date events are interesting – you meet at a local bar/restaurant and the women sit at individual tables and the men rotate around the room to chat with the women for 8 minutes (or maybe it was 6 minutes) each.  At the end of the night you make your choices and if someone you chose has also picked you then you can contact each other and the rest is history.  This system has its benefits – you actually get to lay eyes on a person face to face – and you are not forced to make your initial decision based on their “photo of choice” on line.  However, it is weird to spend your night conducting mini interviews for potential dates.  Plus, if no one that you liked picked you too – you get to feel bad about yourself.  It would be pretty to think that it wouldn’t bother you – better luck next time – but it does bother you and it might take a chink out of your confidence armor that may or may not already be diminished by the fact that you are nearly 40  - and all the “traditionally sexy bits” have gone south for the foreseeable future and you are not nearly as thin as you’d like to be - and there may or may not be random hairs growing where they should not be growing -  hypothetically, of course.  My new favorite saying “those aren’t my breasts, just the bags they came in” is sad, but true.  To be a single woman at 40 has a totally different meaning than being a single man at 40.  For the man it’s like “oh, that rascal (not sure why we revert back to 1940s vernacular), nobody has managed to snatched him up yet” or “he is still sowing his wild oats” as if the single middle-aged man is like the triple word space on the scrabble board – just waiting for that lucky woman to come pluck him out of bachelorhood.  His homeboys all worship him for managing to stay out of the clutches of married life for so long.  For a woman it means you might as well cash in your buy-3-cats-get-one-free Groupon at Pets-R-Us.  Anyway, I digress.  CONTRACTOR Clare thinks I need to get my swagger back and suggests that I own who I am and the body I am in and try Match.com.  To be honest – I’m not sure where I left my swagger – I might have left it in a pair of tight-rolled faded jeans on 4^th North of the dorm at UNCA, or on the dance floor of Cinjades nightclub in downtown Asheville back in 1992, or in the backseat of a 1967 VW convertible. . . . (oops, just kidding, forgot my parents were following).  There are a few people I can think of (and I won’t name names) who might have simply walked off with my swagger along the way.  Who really knows – but I think it’s too late to retrace steps at this point.  I guess if I can’t get my old swagger back, I’ll just have to get some new swagger and make it mine.  I picture swagger as being like a Harry Potter wand (“the wand chooses the wizard”) – in that the swagger chooses the player.  I will have to make myself worthy of some new swagger!  I may or may not do Match.com with CONTRACTOR Clare – I need to decide if it’s worth spending the monthly fee on my CONTRACTOR wages.  If I do end up doing it, I can assure you it will produce many laughs.