west coast swing – hannah ananas

Dancing

We went to a dance event tonight. It was a country event, but we came for the west coast swing finals part of it, and the social dancing after those events. My man and I did.

And it was awesome.

We danced with each other and with other people. I gave him a sort of mini lesson after we first went downstairs and he got a bit overwhelmed just by seeing everything. (Apparently he had spent the whole day being scared and nervous and trying to create reasons not to come because of that. I had kept asking him all day what was wrong and what was going on, since he was being so snippy and unkind toward me and stressed and all. He had only ever told me that he just needed to ‘get over it’ about each little thing.m, though he never really did… until we started dancing, that is.) He then asked me to dance in the main room before and after the competitions and awards, and he voluntarily sought out four other women and danced with them (always while I was out of the room, naturally). And he and I danced more and more, and I showed him more and more bits, and he got better and better. And it was awesome.

I had begun being comfortable with the idea that I likely would not get to do west coast swing with my husband, whoever he would be, because I never much liked the men who would frequent events and get involved in the typical social culture of dance events and all – read ‘lots of alcohol and sleeping around and being pompous’ – and found it unlikely I would meet my man at any event. And then this guy showed up. In our first night of knowing one another, he voluntarily offers up that he grew up doing a bit of ballroom for kids, and that his favorite dance was probably west coast swing. He’d only learned a bit, and it was all self-taught, but he loved it. And so, God blesses us…

Thank you, God, for this lovely opportunity. Thank you for bringing my man and me together. Thank you for this awesome step into the dance world for the both of us this weekend. Phew. Thank you. In your name, I pray. Amen.

Post-a-day 2022

Dance (dance) revolution

Today, I went to a dance workshop (a workshop!) as an attendee follower – and I enjoyed it(!).

Once I got over the panic and stress and frustration that had built up and then practically exploded when all the semi-beginner dancers seemed to be waiting to attend the Not-at-all-for-beginners workshop, and I panicked that the competition guidelines for rankings were utterly superfluous nowadays, that is… fortunately, I got over all of that (and the timing was just off from when I understood the workshop to be happening).

And then, tonight, I danced… socially… at a kind of event… for the second time this month…

Total craziness, I know.

But whew…. I did enjoy it.

I am grateful for the opportunity given to me for this dancing today and tonight.

They both reminded me that I can do this, whatever version of this I want to do in regards to dance and my future.

Yes, I can do this. 🙂

Yay.

Post-a-day 2020

The Body Talks

Let’s talk about sex, baby.

Well, sort of… That’s what my body kept saying to me today.

Today was a day in which my body felt like it was in a state of panic. In a way, it was in a state of panic (or bordering on panic, anyway). To my body, this panic was expressed as a painful desire, né need to procreate.

“Hannah, I need to reproduce – it is what I am designed so well to do, and I’ve waited so long already… let me go!!”

Sigh.

Such was the sort of conversation my body and I had today. It complained and begged and reasoned, and I sighed and just accepted the complaints.

Now, the kicker to all of this is that I am almost entirely comfortable and at ease now (despite being quite sleepy). Why is that? The same reason (-ish) that my body has been panicky lately – I need physical contact in my life. Good, real, physical contact, corporal contact, person-to-person skin-to-skin touch is an absolute necessity for me.

And living in Japan has given me almost none of that. It has quite truly driven my body into a state of panic, in fact.

How did I go from freak-out to calm? I hung out with friends and went dancing with them. In this time, I leaned on them, they leaned on me, we rubbed backs, hugged (the real kind), held hands, stood with our arms draped on one another’s shoulders or around the waist or hips, touched this or that spot on someone to get his/her attention. In short, we had a nice amount of physical contact with one another. No, it was not anything compared to what I am accustomed to having back in the US, – we are So touchy-touchy in Texas, and especially at dance there – however it was tremendous when compared to my average day and week of zero physical contact here in Japan.

I went to a dance event in Korea just a couple weekends ago. I danced like crazy there, and I hugged people and had lots of physical contact with people who love me and whom I love. I think that going from a weekend jammed full of corporal contact and love, back to the solitude and non-touching life I have here right now, my body had a sort of shock. After having gone so many months with only a bit of physical contact here and there in a month, I was accustomed to it. But, after spending a weekend filled with physical contact, it has been difficult to go back to the zero-touching lifestyle.

And so my body cried for a while, until it at last had some loving physical contact this afternoon and tonight, at which point it is ready to take on this next week (until I head to the beach next weekend, at which point the physical contact occasions will resume).

So, instead of listening to the crybaby body make excuses about its evolution and its original design for existence, I just get myself some physical contact, some hugs and snuggles and such, and things work out beautifully.

Cheers to loving physical contact! ❤

Post-a-day 2017

tuesday – tuesday – tuesday

Last night, I went to a dance social in Tokyo. It was mostly friends and acquaintances, though plenty of other people I hadn’t known before the social last night. However, they were all adults, which makes the following scenario worth telling (in my opinion, anyway). As an important matter, know that I wore days-of-the-week underwear yesterday. And, yes, they were for the correct current day of the week.

At the social, I happened to be wearing a pair of blue linen pants with a drawstring. As such, they consistently slipped ever so slightly downward as I danced. With my shirt being longer than the waistband of my pants, that normally would be no biggie. However, seeing as this was west coast swing dancing, that means that my shirt regularly would get twisted or bunched up a bit, rising above the waist band of my pants for a couple or few seconds here and there.

Now, I normally am not opposed to such little glimpses of my midriff as my shirt-pants combination were displaying. However, since my pants kept slipping downward, little by little, in combination with the shirt going upward now and then, this meant that the waistband of my underwear was also showing on a regular basis as I danced. I guess I am not really opposed to this either, as they are nothing sultry, but I guess it is a bit of a social taboo when in certain company. I digress…

I chuckled when I first noticed my peeping underwear waistband, because, do recall, I was wearing days-of-the-week underwear last night. “See?” I thought, “I am just so dedicated to my job, that I am even teaching English after hours!” For, every time my shirt went up, “Tuesday” was visible in clear block letters all the way around my hips.

I shared this thought with a few friends, and we all had a good laugh at the silliness of the situation – that I not only was wearing days-of-the-week underwear, but was unintentionally showing them off to everyone, and found a cute little joke around its happening. One girlfriend commented, that it was a mighty fine and creative way to teach high schoolers English, removing clothing and showing the English off on parts of the body. I replied how I could only imagine how much the boys would love learning English. She then said that even she would be interested in seeing that lesson happen. After all, who could resist such a unique lesson, boy or girl, man, woman, or +? I know I’d want to see it, if something like that happened, because that’s just too ridiculous to pass up. 😛

Post-a-day 2017