hannah.ananas

Ballet

I went to a ballet class this morning. My friend has signed up her daughter, who recently turned three, for ballet classes at a studio in a nearby neighborhood. I had joined them to watch that class this week after school one day. While it was absolutely adorable and a total morale boost, it also made me want to do ballet classes myself.

I had only officially done a beginner series of six classes eight years ago, plus a private lesson and a single drop-in in an intermediate class after the series. I also had had a few beginner drop-in classes here and there years before that. Very little had stuck from those, though.

So, eight years after the beginner series, here I am, stepping into a class that is for middle- and high-school-students, but that is technically an open drop-in class for adults, too.

I was terrified, and I showed up anyway. This morning was certainly a morning filled with courage. I didn’t do amazingly – not at all. But I did do most of the stuff in the class. By the end of the floor work, we were doing some things I had not ever learned to do, so I was guessing and making it up as I went, and also stepping back to observe more before trying it out again. All in all, it was a good time had by me. I imagine the kids in the class were thrown by my presence, but I rolled with it happily. And the teacher made it clear that I was, in fact, invited back both for that class and for certain other ones, too. (I even asked if I could take the lower level classes, and she told me that I didn’t need to take them. So, though I was happy yet serious with my inquiry, she was, too. I apparently am functioning enough to stay in the class.) So, that was cool. Woohoo!

I look forward to improving and to doing better each class.

I certainly have things to work on before I go back, and I hope I can make that happen consistently, starting this week. Because I really want to go back and to do better by a lot each time. I truly enjoy the feeling of doing ballet right. It is such a good feeling. Not because it’s right, but because ballet itself truly just feels amazing to do.

God, thank you for this blessing and opportunity of today. Thank you for the dancing. Thank you for my own sense of humour and easy acceptance of my current levels with everything. Help me to honor you through practice and dancing. In your name, I pray. Amen.

Post-a-day 2023

P.S. God, would you heal my grandma and my brothers’ dad, please? In your name, I pray. Amen.

Stress

Today was tough for me, filled with emotions, both of my own and of others. I did things in ways that weren’t the best, but that were the best I could do with the information and experience I had at the time. Now, only hours later, I certainly would do them differently, if presented with the opportunity again. Sometimes, that is hard to accept, knowing so soon how I could have done something so much better than I did. But, as I said already, I did the best I could with the available information. Now that I have more, I can act differently going forward. I did well at first, and I will do well in the future. Every event is a lesson available to me, allowing me to improve for the future. Today was no exception.

Dear God, please, help heal those in need of your healing. Help release the strain held so heavily and highly by the student today. Help him to accept fully your love and to trust in you. Help him to accept the help he needs and wants. And help him to let go of the restraints that prevent him from getting that help. Heal him, please. Thank you for this blessing of such trust. Thank you for this life. In your name, I pray. Amen.

Post-a-day 2023

Only at rodeo

Only at a rodeo meeting can I casually mention that I discovered that Willie Nelson is 90 years old now, and have someone respond, and absolutely unpretentiously, “Oh, yeah… He is. He’s a long-time personal friend of mine, you know.”

These people. What a beautiful mix we all are. I love it and I am grateful to be part of it.

God, please, continue to bless us all at the rodeo. Thank you for the blessings you have granted us thus far. Thank you for the love and the learning and the countless opportunities to make a positive difference for others and to share your love with the world around us. Thank you. Amen.

Post-a-day 2023

Learning SOMEthing

Context: As a way to help them behave, we did a bad word/phrase of the day two years ago in one class. The words and phrases weren’t actually very bad, but most of them were quite useful for the kids – they were things that they said to each other all the time in English, anyway. Now they could use them in French.
…..

In class this week, a student asked, after finishing the test, if he and another kid could go study in the hall. I told him to ask in French. He said, “N—— et moi pouvons… casse-toi?”

The first part was right… “Can N—— and I…”

The second part means either the command, “Get out of here!” or, even, “GTF out!”

Most of the class, after a momentary pause for all to process and draw breath, burst out laughing as his well-intended effort of unintentionally forcefully telling the teacher to leave class immediately.

At least he remembered something from sophomore year! 😛

Post-a-day 2023

Love from afar

My man is in Mexico. I miss him. I wish he were here. Or that I were there. But that I still could be doing my job… which is here. So, yeah…

I miss him.

God, please, keep him and the dog safe. Help to heal us all, that we may be close to you always and in all ways, and that we may pursue and want and fulfill your will. In your name, I pray. Amen.

Post-a-day 2023

Sleep

When will I get enough? When will I find a rhythm that actually works for me again? I am just so tired… everything is difficult right now. I want to do so much more in each day. I need sleep just to get done what I’m already attempting to do in a day, let alone more… I need to sleep more each night.

God, help me, please, to find a rhythm and pattern that gives me the sleep I need each night. Please. Amen.

Post-a-day 2023

Double FaceTime

I call him on my laptop, and he answers with his phone. He keeps dropping his phone, lying as he is on the sofa before bed. He gets his laptop to call me on it. I plan answer the new call on my phone. We will be on two FaceTime calls at once. He calls it a “three-way”. I just laugh at the stupidity of it.

Suddenly, his name pops up on my laptop screen. He has, instead, joined the original FaceTime call on his laptop.

Ridiculous.

Utterly ridiculous.

Post-a-day 2023

“Give us a brake”

In eighth grade, I submitted a partnered science project about soap and how it interacts with water, in which I had typed all about how the soap “brakes” up the surface of the water, etc., etc. Our teacher had us come look at the display and read through it. It took me a long time to understand what the issue was, though I understood immediately that something was wrong with the typed pages on the display. It took some obvious hinting and and bit of clarifying from the teacher before I truly got it that I was supposed to have used the word “break” instead of “brake”. Every single one was written as “brake”. At least I was consistent.

It took me years to understand and to accept how I had made such a big mistake. How had I, one who pays such close attention to details, messed up something so simple? Quite simply, because I had used the word I understood to be accurate, and I hadn’t really realized there were two different words. Why?

Because of the constant road signs around Houston throughout my childhood that read, “GIVE US A BRAKE” and had a character of a road worker on it. I knew the phrase well enough, and, because I didn’t know the spelling differences at play, I never understood the signs. I genuinely always thought they were some form of protest it workers union’s form of complaining about how people driving needed to chill out and not honk at and be mad at the road construction workers, because they were working hard. I always understood the sign to mean, “Give is a break.” I never knew – not for a while after that project – that the signs were just asking people to use their brakes to slow down as they pass through the construction areas… never knew.

And I got to feel like an idiot in eighth grade science class because of that simple little fact.

So, yeah… wasn’t a fan of signs using misspellings or fake words in the first place. Definitely wasn’t after I figured out that one.

😛

Post-a-day 2023

At the last minute

Talk about last-minute things… I have the test proctoring in the morning, then just a few hours before I must be across town to meet with someone. And, just tonight, I was asked to bring certainty bings with me that are not exactly easy to find in a hurry. Amazon could do it, for sure, in a few days. But not by midday tomorrow. So, as soon as the gets finishes, I’ll be rushing to at least two stores. And I’ll have to figure out and find some other things online to print off before I even go to the stores, too. And then I have to drive across town to meet and do all these things relating to everything I’ll have just picked up… 😛

Just nutso.

But I am grateful to be doing it all and to be going to meet this person.

God, grant me the words to help her heal now. Help me to help her see and feel and know you truly, in all your love and Glory. Help me to heal her and return her to you. Keep us all safe, please. And thank you for these many blessings of this love-filled and blessed life you have granted to me. In your name, I pray. Amen.

Post-a-day 2023

What to do

Sometimes, it feels like I must pick between several things that are all happening on the same day, overlapping just slightly, such that I technically could do them all, but for shorter amounts of time than I would want to spend at each event, and knowing that I would be absolutely wiped at the end of it all. So, I must pick. And I have nothing to do on any other days – only on these days where everything is happening on the same day.

But then, oftentimes, when I start to see how I could make it all work, things pop up and declare themselves incompatible with something else suddenly, and so the decision is made for me. The priority items win out in the incompatibility contest, and the less important events are set aside and dismissed. What’s funny about it, too, is that I often end up not doing the one thing I was kind of really excited to go do. But, hey, the important stuff is ranked so for a reason. And they usually end up being wonderful, anyway.

Such is the case with this weekend. I had to decline several exciting things in order to do work and to give love somewhere that it is very much needed.

On that note…

Dear God, please, keep me safe this weekend. Help me to share your love with B—, such that she truly experiences your love for her. Help her to feel and acknowledge your presence. Help her to be freed of that which she carries so heavily right now. Help her to let go of all that does not serve her in your will and your love. Help me to say and do just what she needs to hear and experience, in order to find your love newly. Thank you for this opportunity. Bless me with your perfect words and actions this weekend, please. Thank you for this life. Help me help B— be grateful for it all, too. And, if there be demons in and/or around her, help me to wash them away permanently. In your name, I pray. Amen.

Post-a-day 2023