Dancing and more...

I have several things to talk about that don't go together, but I'm putting them all in one post anyway!

The first is about our dance class.  We've been taking dancing lessons for the past couple of months.  It's a "Round Dance" class - read the part about "cued round dances" in the link.  That's what we're doing.  The session we're taking right now is Waltz.

Mostly, we've just been interested in learning to dance (because we think it's a lost art in the United States!), we heard about this class, it's really inexpensive ($10/adult per session), and we can take the kids to it, too!  The husband and I took Swing Dance classes many, many years ago, but haven't tried anything like this since.  It's turning out to be pretty fun.

The classes are for an hour and 20 minutes every Sunday afternoon and the kids are learning right along with us.  We tried to have them learn together, but Fellan has a hard time paying attention and keeping up with the cues for the whole time.  Some of the other adults ("angels" who know all the dance steps already) at the classes paired up with them for a couple of the classes.  But for the last two classes the husband and I have been dancing with them for the first hour of the class and then they go sit out for the rest of the time.  That's actually been working out really well - they just don't have the attention span to put up with the entire class.

I was really impressed with Fellan for the first part of class yesterday - he knew all the steps, kept up with the cues, and did really well.  (And he was very proud of himself.)  It quickly devolved into him rolling around on the floor, but at least it was good for a little while!  :)

Next on the list of topics is the weight loss contest - we're at the end of the 3rd week today and I'm down 2.7% so far.  Almost on track to get to 10% in 10 weeks.  Tonight is going to kill my progress temporarily since it's Halloween, though.  We invited all our neighborhood friends to come over for pizza and drinks before trick-or-treating.  I'm going to have to work out extra hard for the rest of the week.

And my last random topic for today is cat fights.  Specifically, our cats!  The new cat, Spot, continues to terrorize our old cat, Midas.  Midas is 18.5 years old and has a hard time getting around anymore.  He spends 99% of his time in our bedroom and only goes to the laundry room in the hallway outside our bedroom to eat (occasionally) and use the litter box.

However, Midas has increasingly been enticed out of the bedroom over the last few weeks.  Spot will come upstairs, stalk down the hallway, come into our bedroom, and then growl and hiss at Midas until Midas decides he's had enough and chases Spot down the hallway and part-way down the stairs.  We haven't seen Midas move that quickly in about 8 years!

It sounds horrible, too.  Spot makes the absolute worst screaming noises.  Every time I hear them, I'm convinced Midas must have her in a choke-hold out in the hallway.  I'll run out there, bracing for a horrifying scene, and there's... nothing.  Midas is usually laying in the hallway (completely worn out from the effort) and Spot is sitting at the top of the stairs looking at me like, "What?"  I've only seen them trade punches once and neither seemed to interested in doing much damage to the other.

It's getting rather old, though.  If Spot would just be nice to Midas, there wouldn't be any trouble at all.  Midas would love a warm little body to cuddle up with now that the weather is finally getting cold.  But at this point in time, I don't see that happening very soon.  Too bad.