SYTYCD

... only if you are a dance and TV lover will you know what the above initials stand for.

"So You Think You Can Dance" is a TV series that I reluctantly have to tuck under the "reality TV" banner - most of which I class as car-crash television full of truly awful wannabe's that should not be given the time of day, let alone a whole series of airtime. I think SYTYCD airs in the US, Canada and Australia and Malaysia so far. The UK would love this show.

Disclaimer on really poor quality of photos - explanation / excuse coming right up ...

Simply put, thousands of dancers across the land audition for a spot in the Top 20. The ten chosen males and ten chosen females then pair up each week, learn a routine or three and then are judged on their performance. Each week one guy and one girl are eliminated from the show, until you have a winner. Simple, eh? The prize now stands at $100,000 and a new car!

My children are now addicted. Literally. Daughter Number One especially. She is 11 years old and does three dance classes of her own and assists to teach at two others. She just assumes the TV series will still be running in 7 years time when she will be old enough to audition! Daughter Number Two is 9 and although she does not know it, has great skill and poise at ballet, but prefers Jazz.

The TV franchise has recently concluded it's second Canadian series - and the Top 10 are currently on tour.

So guess who took a three hour drive south to Lethbridge on Sunday night to go and watch these dancers girate for an evening. Yep - yours truly.

Two mums and three hyper excited young girls in a car - ooh what fun. And it was. The show was good, albeit too short - and at $70 a ticket, it needed to be worth the journey. (And if you already know that the tour are coming to Calgary tomorrow night - yes, I knew that too and it would have been soooo much easier - but we'll be on board a flight to Heathrow by show-time, so that wasn't going to work unfortunately.)

The girl who won the last series, Tara-Jean, was actually a Lethbridge native anyway so you can imagine how loud and chuffed the audience were to see her. Several standing ovations and deservedly so.

Photos for you taken on the point-and-press camera that was snuck into my bag. The tickets categorically said "no cameras or recording devices" so I assumed we would get a good rub down and be searched on the way in. Nope. So after hiding my disappointment that some fit doorman didn't need to pat me down, and taking our seats, and then watching every other attendee take out large cameras from bags and pockets, my friend though "sod this" and walked back to the car to get our little cameras... If I'd known I was going to be such a rebel and buck the camera laws so wildly, I'd have brought the decent Pansonic with me!

Modern dance can be dirty these days. I mean reeaaallll dirty. I mean getting down and filthy. Not something the eyes of the 9 and 11 year olds in the audience need to see really, nor understand thankfully. Costumes are strappy, stringy and raunchy, movements are very sexy, sequins are flying and hips are doing things mine could never do in a million years.

I am my mother - I have morphed, unseen, into the "middle years" where I swing wildly from being a mum who wants to cover her daughter's eyes - to tilting my head sideways to get a better look, thinking "Cor, I wish I could wear that, and I wish I could do that - with him".

Of course, I know other people that just hate musicals and dance. Why, in the middle of a perfectly good film, does someone have to burst into song. That's just stupid.

Ahhh, that's my bliss.

We're seeing "Wicked" in the London West End next week... Yay!

"So - this here round thing then ....

.... now that I have caught it, what did you want me to do with it?"

She just doesn't get this whole "fetch" routine. It's too complicated.

I love her to bits, but she's not ... er .... the sharpest tool in the box.

Pensive for Christmas cards

I have been busily attacking a long list and scribbling away at my Christmas cards this week. The numbers of cards dwindle a little each year as I try to be more sensible, economical and green and therefore send e-Cards and emails - but I know I love to receive cards so I do have a fondness for these little posted messages in December, despite the commerciality of it, the cost of postage and the sheer waste of paper!

But I am truly stuck on one particular card this year and seek some empathetic suggestions.

Some friends of ours in the UK lost their ten year old son last January so this will be their first Christmas without him, hotly followed by the anniversary of his death. I am literally lost for words (I know). I want to send something, write something, make contact again. My heart breaks for them when I think (frequently) how their lives have changed.

What to say? I have contemplated a letter as opposed to a card - I have thought about a special type of card - thinking that something smothered in Santa's or smiling reindeer would be (even more ) inappropriate. It's the elephant in the room. Their Christmas will be incredibly difficult - I don't think they will choose to ignore it as they have another child - and the mother does have her faith which has taken an almighty pounding this year, so I'm not sure Angels-on-High would say the right thing either.

They were quite good friends when we lived there - several BBQ's and school socials type of thing - but not heart-to-heart buddies. I have written twice since I heard what happened.

I do not know anyone else who has lost a child - somehow parents and partners are in a different category of grief, I'm not sure why really. I feel it totally inappropriate to even mention how we are getting on.

Thoughts gratefully appreciated fellow bloggers. I thank you.

It's my turn ...

OMG - I have received a job offer ...

How exciting is that?!

And it's a "proper" job too - with regular hours and everything. They even throw in a salary!

Final details, start dates and the small print will follow in the next day or two - but an interview that I did last week (and which I thought was actually pretty tough) seems to have paid off, and they must have liked me. I had, of course, spent the whole evening thinking of all the answers I should have given to the questions, but I guess I maybe said something right afterall. Hurrah! (I really do dislike interviews and I think most people find it difficult to big-up themselves when put on the spot).

I can't tell you how pleased I am. I may have hinted at despondency over the past few months - you know, just mentioned it in passing kind of thing. I doubt you've picked up on it!! It's a tough old climate out there right now - so today, this just seems really sweet.

The job is an administration position within a college, and I may be about to embark on a fairly steep learning curve about Canadian education. It appears to offer everything I have been looking for - an interesting subject matter, lots of people contact, lots of different aspects to learn and apply - and most importantly of course, a desk! The location is fairly easy for me to get to, the campus seems very nice and staff I have met have all been lovely so far, with a positive, can-do attitude. Long may these first impressions continue.

This will be the first time juggling a full time "regular hours" type job with children - so that too may produce some interesting morning and afternoon routines. But I need this - we need this - and I hope we can all pull together and pull it off without too much hassle.

My hearty good wishes to anyone else still looking for work. Your time will come, I promise.

Cheers!

Random blasts of colour ...

I just fancy something bright and cheerful today - no reason .....

... like I said, random colour - hee hee ...

Winning the lottery ...

... well, sort of. It feels like it anyway. Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp implement anyway.

I am like one of those early morning listeners to a local radio phone-in. You know the kind of small cheesy radio station where you can win 98 point 5 dollars - 'cos that is their FM band - or they might even go up to $985 if they are feeling flush and it's a really difficult question about Madonna, or Taylor Swift, or the New Moon movie. (They are also those radio stations that use up all the daft letters of the alphabet to make up their name - KXZY type of thing - be great in Scrabble)

Well, yesterday - I was like that early morning listener. I let out a wee restrained squeal of delight. I am in the money.

I was sorting out some bits and pieces in the bathroom and I wanted to put a washbag/vanity bag/whatever-bag-you-call-it into the washing machine. I carefully emptied it of odd bits of cotton wool, one rusty razor blade, some post-it notes (?) and one of those little sachets of face mask that I always take on holiday in the vain hope of somehow finding the time to relax long enough to treat my face to a mini spa day. It's only about 4 years old.

And in the zipped back pocket of the wash bag was a small white sealed envelope. I took it out then gasped with recognition. I ripped it open - and yep, it was full of crisp new Canadian dollar bills. Equalling one thousand and eighty dollars to be exact.

How does one find $1080 in a bathroom? It's a fair question. And don't be mean about my slovenly and infrequent vanity bag washing habits here.

When we first moved to Canada in May 2007, I brought $5,000 in cash to get us through the first few weeks of accommodation, car hire and incidentals while we sorted out bank accounts. I thoughtfully split it up all the money into small bundles and hid it all over our luggage - to be on the safe side you understand.

One week later we moved into our home and another week later my husband and I had a fleeting and mystified discussion about how quickly we had gone through all that money. And then the idea was gone, we dismissed it and moved on. Other things were more pressing.

Two and a half years later, and here is the lost (thought spent) cash. And wow, what timing. It certainly takes the load off my mind for the Christmas season. Things like this never happen to me. And as you can imagine inside a busy and financially-pressed family home, the whole lot was allocated and accounted for within about three nano-seconds.

And whilst not being able to quite contemplate early retirement and a villa in France on my one thousand dollars, I did momentarily entertain the idea of not telling my husband and just arriving home one afternoon with handfuls of essential new clothes. Only momentarily though.

Well, OK - it was more than a moment, if I'm honest - but hey, I did the right thing ..... didn't I?

They're back ....

The strippers returned last weekend - and once again attacked our lone mountain ash tree devouring all it's berries in a matter of minutes. Greedy, greedy fellas! They had obviously cased the joint, or simply remembered what a great party they had last year - in fact the whole neighbourhood produced rich pickings, and they gorged themselves silly, and then swooped in huge groups from one front lawn to the next.

And 20 minutes later they had completely disappeared. Probably off to pillage the next housing development somewhere. How do they migrate with such huge bellies?!

If I've checked the internet correctly, then I believe these are Bohemian Waxwings which seem native to Europe, Asia and North America and like to nest in coniferous forests.

And I liked the definition of their latin name - Bombycilla garrulus - which I have stolen from Wiki.

"The generic name Bombycilla (from Latin Bombyx [silk/silk moth] + cilla [tail] ) is a direct translation of the Swedish name "Sidensvans' - silk tail and refers to the silky soft plumage of the bird; the species name garrulus means 'noisy' or 'quarrelsome'. "

Lordy - I know a few Homo sapiens garrulus, that's for sure!