Unsolicited Advice

So, it's been a couple of months now, and I've managed to cadge a few dance lessons out of Ye Ballroom Instructor and the new Eccentric. They're all very busy, because everyone in the arts has like eight jobs, but between the two of them I have at least got a general idea of what the hell is going on.

We have all now learned the following things:

I'm more or less fine if I'm leading. (Raise your hand if you somehow did not see this coming.) I'm not good, but I'm capable of following directions which will eventually make me better.I'm also more or less fine if I'm backleading, although I am really, really not supposed to be doing that.I'm extremely nervous and very laggy as a follow. Partly this is because I just don't know the signals yet, but mostly it's because--My balance is absolute rubbish. I keep telling them that my balance is rubbish. I think they believe that I believe that, but I also think they think I'm comparing myself to…

I'm setting this to post while I'm at the vet with Grue. I scheduled the appointment a week ago. I seem to have timed it pretty well; he's not been eating anything I haven't been feeding him with an eye dropper or my hands, and as of this morning he's refusing even that. He made a half-hearted attempt to eat some of my seafood salad last night, but today I can't even get him to lick Ensure off my fingers.

He's gotten as much Tylenol as he wants. Acetaminophen poisoning takes 2-3 days to kick in, and by that time it won't really be his problem anymore. I hope it helped.

Grue was a very good rat. He received many pets, and ate many foods. He even knew his name, and occasionally came out for pets when I said it. He was scared of everything when I brought him home, and he was probably scared of everything until the very last, but somewhere in there he decided it was more important to be brave enough to come out and cuddle. He spent most of his last days and…

The Ballroom-And-Random-Other-Things Dancer has inquired whether I'd be willing to trade hoop lessons for ballroom lessons. I am trying to decide how happy I ought to be.

I believe he sincerely thought it was a good idea when it emerged from his mouth. Many things emerged from his mouth over the three-weekend run of the show. He is charmingly loquacious and there is little he is not curious about. One night I tracked him down after the show and found him on the deserted stage, being so helpful that I had to tow him off by the elbow to let the crew clean up in peace. I was also once regaled with the long-form version of the theme song to a French-language cowboy show he recalled from his youth. Those of you who hang around STEM people will be unsurprised to hear that, before he racked up all the IMDb credits, he did his undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering.

Lots of wonderful people thought trading hoop lessons for ______ lessons was a great idea when they said it. I spent…

I now know two of the dancers in this sequence, not that you can pick either of them out in the background of the potato-quality YouTube video. (You can spot one of them in the B-roll/outtakes if you're quick.) One of them was the choreographer, who happened to be a part of one of the collaborations in the most recent show I've worked. He is a very nice man. He has decided we are going to be friends! I begin to wonder if all of the ballroom dancers are secretly Labrador retrievers.

This is becoming something of a pattern. I'm not displeased, just bewildered. I have no idea why people with arts grants and IMDb credits continually talk to me like I'm a part of their community in any but the most hopeful amateur capacity, but they are clearly going to keep doing it.

I make it a policy, when I work front of house for performances, to not bother the dancers. Everyone in the performing arts has their own personal rituals to prepare for going out on stage, and it's consid…