Thankfulness: November 7, 2008

I was on my morning walk today, when I thought, "Did I post a thankfulness entry yesterday or did I space it out?" I came home to find that, yes, indeed, I did space it out. So here it is a day late.

Yesterday I was thankful for Empire Coffee. Empire is a local coffee shop that's actually located in a train car at the train station. Their hot chocolate isn't as good as that of the other coffee shop I was in this week, but it has other benefits:

• It's in a train car. That's just cool.
• It's all organic.
• It's at the train station, which means you can hear the trains go by and on a Friday afternoon you can also watch the college kids waiting for the bus. (Chico's passenger train service is a middle of the night kind of thing. The Amtrak bus to Sacramento leaves more regularly, and during the day.)
• Most of the train station building is taken up by the Chico Art Center, which offers art classes of varying types. Yesterday, every time a train went by, the kids in the art class rushed out of their classroom and around the deck to watch the train.
• The people - employees and customers - are fascinating. My writing group used to meet at Empire, and this was actually somewhat problematic. Interesting people would come in, and we'd all stop our conversation to watch them. You could practically see each of us writing our own versions of their stories.

Thankfulness: November 8, 2008

Today I'm thankful for ballet. Our local ballet company, Chico Community Ballet, puts on a fabulous, community-including production (community members play the party guests, and one of the local karate studio owners plays the Mouse King with his students generally forming the armies of mice and soldiers) of The Nutcracker every other year with productions of other ballets in alternating years. Two years ago, when my mom and I went to see The Nutcracker, I thought how much fun it would be to take ballet. I actually took ballet when I was a little one, but I passed out in class one day when I was eight or so, and refused to go back. Last year when we saw Cinderella, I thought it wasn't quite as good as The Nutcracker, but the dancing looked like so much fun. I told my mom I wished she hadn't let me quit ballet when I was younger, and she said, "You were pretty stubborn." For my birthday, my parents gave me dance lessons at Chico Creek Dance Centre. Chico Creek is the same place where I took ballet when I was little, although they've moved to a different location since then. The ballet class that fit into my schedule is Saturday morning adult beginning ballet. I told my mom that even on Saturdays when I'm feeling cranky, I feel so good when I come out of class. She said, "See? Physical movement." But it's not just about the physical movement, although I'm sure that's part of it. The teacher makes a huge difference, and then there are the rest of the people taking the class.

Our teacher for this class is Debbie Jorritsma, who is just incredible. I keep trying to put my finger on what makes her such a good teacher, and I'm not sure what it is. She's very positive and upbeat, even when she's saying, "No," and making corrections. She's also delighted every time she's making corrections or explaining something and we get it.

The other students. Part of what makes going to class every week an adventure and entertainment is that we never know exactly who's going to show up. I'm there pretty much every week, except when I was traveling a lot in the summer. S is almost always there too, complaining about mornings. Her boyfriend is the father of someone I went to elementary school with. K1 is newish to our class although not to ballet. K1 and S are both older than I am. M1 is 12 and new to our class but not to ballet. L is 14 and we miss her when she has to miss class. She was new this summer. D is new to our class this semester but took ballet for many years before. I think she's a college student, although I'm not sure. T is one of the two men in our class. He's a riot. I suspect it's mostly unintentional and that he really is just that amusingly chatty. He's actually a hip-hop/break dancer, and he's on their schedule now as a teacher. When I first started taking class, he was starting to recognize the importance of plies; he is now a recent convert to the benefits of stretching and massaging feet. Last week, he came around to each of us before class and did this thing with our feet that kind of hurts in the moment but really loosens them up. We're generally the regulars.

Then there are the people who take other classes but sometimes come to ours. R is another older woman who sometimes brings her daughter, who also takes other classes, with her. I run into her at the library every once in a while. L, M2, and M3 all take other classes but have been coming to our class to get back to basics. K2 used to come to our class regularly, then came to our class for the second half while she was subbing as the teacher for another class that overlapped ours, and now sometimes comes to our class and sometimes goes to the more advanced class after it. J is the other of the two men in our class. He comes sometimes and chats with S about local musical productions and acquaintances in common. The three of us have been making a game out of trying to identify the music when it's from a musical.

On any particular day, we don't know who might be in our class. Today, in addition to all of the regulars and all but one of the semi-regulars, we also had a group of more advanced dancers who were there because they were going to miss their class for a performance and wanted to warm up.