Since Kendall was three, she's been taking ballet. She loves it, and she's perfectly built for it. We live at the far north edge of town but drive into the near-downtown area to go to one certain studio for classes with one certain lady. Miss Shannon is truly talented, an absolute creative genius with patience like you wouldn't believe. I have to tell you how lucky I feel that she didn't shake the Oklahoma dust from her Capezios and take off for New York! There are at least three other studios that are much closer to our house, but they don't have Miss Shannon. She takes students as young as two (in ballet) and she's got classes in all the best disciplines: ballet, tap, jazz, flamenco, hip-hop, and (of course) belly dancing.
Have a look! Everything Goes Dance and Drama
Last night was picture-taking time for Kendall's class. We knew from last year that we wouldn't be allowed to take pictures while the guy who charges for pictures was taking pictures, so I got some beforehand ... here's our favorite:
While we were waiting for it to be our class's turn, the usual bunch of parents wandered across the street to the cute little convenience store to buy Powerball tickets and scratch-offs (yeah, it's to benefit education ... AS IF ... we all aim to be rich! -ha-). Upon stepping outside, we could see some lovely cumulonimbus clouds directly to the south of us, which typically means that somebody's in for a storm. (Better that they're straight south of you, though, since those storms usually move southwest to northeast, so they aren't likely to hit you.) Pretty soon we could smell rain, and the wind got a little weird (which is saying not much and a whole lot all at the same time, because Oklahoma is a darned windy place ... you just have to know what the wind means when it does any given thing). Well, you know me, don't you? Not only do I have the weather-widget on my desktop, I've recently put The Weather Channel's storm alert system onto the cell phone (because believe it or not, my fat posterior is NOT always in front of this machine). Sure enough, the phone bleeped that I had a message, and it was from TWCAlerts, telling me that there was a severe thunderstorm warning for Oklahoma City. Yep, it looked like at least the southern two-thirds and the eastern half was getting a fair drenching at that moment, so hey, good on ya, glad to know this thing works.
Then the sirens went off. ARGH.
Thank you, John Harder ... friends, this man is married to a woman who loves tornadoes the way I do (which is to say NOT AT ALL) ... he did not complain one iota when he was sent across the street to check the TV at the convenience store and report back as to what was happening. (He did tease me ever so slightly about alleviating the stress of the moment by firing up a cigarette, though, so I guess I'll have to TP his house sometime soon. Sorry, John.) The guy went on these fact-finding errands not just once but several times (because later the sirens went off again, and we had to be sure that a tornado wasn't going to drop right on our heads out of the tiny little cirrus clouds that were straight up in the sky above us).
Let's draw a long story short, shall we? We got done with our bit of picture-taking, then hopped into Thumper The Big Blue Truck to go get something to eat on the way home. Usually, the brats want to go someplace like Olive Garden or Red Robin or Mimi's Cafe. Last night, though, I asked them if they wanted to go "out" or if they wanted to get something to take home, and sit and watch the storms, and the meal-in-a-bag from a place where you don't get out of the car was the unanimous winner.
Of course, that wasn't the end of it. There was another funky storm that blew through later, but it was just a nice tame little squall line with wind gusts up over 70 miles per hour and hail the size of golf balls. No big! : )~
No comments:
Post a Comment