Swan Lake

Found this online today.

It's the whole of Swan Lake in one YouTube video :D so if you have a spare 2 hours 15 minutes where you don't need your eyes for something else, feast them on this!

We have Svetlana Zakharova as our Odette/Odile, and Roberto Bolle as our Siegfried, and the rest of the Teatro alla Scala, an Italian company based in Milan. I really enjoyed it but was slightly disappointed that they used the happy ending, rather than the traditional tragic one. But the dancing is still beautiful so I'll let them away with it!

Love and kisses

The Red Shoes

This evening I watched, courtesy of BBC iPlayer, a film about ballet called The Red Shoes. Starring Marius Goring, Anton Walbrook, and the stunning Moira Shearer, and produced in 1948, this film was quite different to nearly anything I've seen before. It got off to a bit of a slow start, I have to say, without much ballet, and the little that was there didn't seem very good (in my inexperienced eyes), and I nearly turned it off.I'm glad I didn't though, because it was a really great film, and included an abridged, film-rather-than-stage version of the title ballet, which I really enjoyed. The films and tv programmes I have watched about ballet never seem to show you much of the ballet that they're featuring, and so I really enjoyed getting the whole picture of what the ballet was about, which made it much easier to see the parallels with the main storyline of the film.

Speaking of the story line, the film focuses on a ballet company, whose artistic director is man named Boris Lermontov. His abrupt, angry, controlling manner make him an impossible character to like, and his moustache is awful, but it suits the role so I'll let him away with it.

In the initial scenes, we are in the theatre watching a ballet put on by this company, with both Vicky Page, and Julian Cramer. Lermontov meets Vicky that evening at a party, and refuses to watch her dancing, but hires her to his company anyway. Cramer writes to Lermontov the next day and explains that he wrote the music for the ballet we've just watched, but it was stolen from him by his professor, who gave it to Lermontov. Cramer is given a job as an orchestra coach.

Both of the young characters are initially well treated by Lermontov, in his own way. Vicky is made a principle dancer, and Cramer composes a new ballet for her to dance, and it is over this that they fall in love. This makes Lermontov very angry, when he eventually finds out, as he is besotted by Vicky, and plans to make her famous. Its hard to blame him, she's talented, classy, and extremely gorgeous.

So Lermontov fires Cramer, and Vicky is upset and leaves the company, goes with him and they get married. But she stops dancing, because her husband is focussing on his career. Its very romantic, but this is a girl who has said that dancing is her life, and that she dances because she must. She apparently goes to class every day, and always keeps up her form - you can tell she still wants to dance, and its heart breaking for her that she cannot.

Lermontov meets Vicky again later, almost by chance, and brings all this up, and begs her to dance again, promising he will make her an amazing dancer and a massive star. Cramer is in London, at the premier of his opera, but he leaves to come and find Vicky, and is gutted to find her in a dressing room, minutes away from the opening scene of the Red Shoes. She says she loves him, he says she loves dancing more. She realises he's right. Cramer leaves, Lermontov does a victory dance. Then she realises she was wrong, and jumps off a cliff into the path of a train. Funnily enough she is not instantly killed but survives long enough to tell her beloved to take off her red shoes.

The three leads were all very well done - each character made sense, and their interactions were not predictable but they were believable (apart from the train thing, and the one moment where Vicky gets up in the middle of the night and her slippers have high heels - or maybe that was just a fashion thing...) I love films from this era as everyone is so elegant and charming, and I adore the way everyone talks to each other.

The ballet in this film is very different to modern ballet. They do all the same steps and things, but here it seems less extreme, and tortuous. Here, all the ballet dancers look like they are having fun. In other ballets and ballet films that I have seen, which were more modern, it always seemed like a chore. The dancers spend every second minute telling you its all worth it because they love dancing, but usually I'm not sure I believe them. In this, however, Vicky really does seem to love what she does, and in the end, its not the pressure of dancing that causes her problem. No one ever tells her she's not doing well enough or that she's easily replaceable. The problems in this film stem from the relationships among her and Craster and Lermontov. All in all, I would have to say that anyone who wants to watch a film about ballet, to be encouraged to do it, then they should watch this, and not Black Swan. It might be older, but there's more dancing in this, Moira Shearer is a professional dancer, the story line is nicer, and the leading lady is a red-head.

All Work and No Play... But Not Any More!!

Ladies and gentlemen,

I am delighted to announce that I have now FINISHED my final honours dissertation! Apart from a few issues with formatting, and the fact that I have to get it print and bound.

I feel I have completed the boss level of my university education. Well sort of. I still have seven exams to do in April/May.

But nevertheless the completion of the project means I will have more time to do all of the things that I have not been doing over the last few weeks, especially in relation to the summer, and some of my other responsibilities.

I will be cooking more, working more and maybe going to some more ballet classes. And I'm considering jumping on the bandwagon like the rest of my blogosphere and doing the 30 Day Song Challenge. Having spent so much time studying recently means I've been listening to quite a lot of music - it stops me from feeling so lonely - and sharing tastes in music with folk as well. So there are a few bands I've come across lately which aren't all up there in the charts that deserve a shout out!

I absolutely ADORE Spotify - I honestly don't know what I'd do without it. I hate paying for music downloads and don't want to download them for free, partly because its illegal but also because my laptop is dying enough already and doesn't need the clutter. Spotify lets me listen to anything I like, whenever, and if I don't like something, I just won't add it to any of my playlists - it won't be clogging up my hard drive for the rest of eternity. If you don't already have it, go to their website and have a look. It's like having the worlds biggest CD library. AND you don't have to hunt through it for that disc you put back in the wrong box!

But now I'm off for a few hours sleep before tomorrow's final edits, printing and binding.

Hugs and kisses

Real Ballet!

Class today was verrry exciting! We did a few new things today, rond de jambes at the barre, and grande battements, and we did a new centre sequence with lots of port de bras and something called a chasse. I didn't quite catch all the French, but I'm sure when we do it again I'll remember!

Anyway, the exciting part was that instead of the usual things we've been working on in centre - sequences with pirouettes, soutenous and waltzing, and corner-to-corner things with temps levees and grand jetes, we learned real ballet! I know right! :D

We started learning the Spanish Dance from Coppelia, which is just a very short part, of course, and not too complex.

Here's a video I found on youtube of Lisa Pavane dancing the role of Swanhilda in Coppelia with the Australian Ballet. This particular clip begins with the Spanish dance, which is convenient because I don't have 8 minutes to spend watching the whole thing as well as writing a blog post for you! The proper choreography part that we learned begins at 0:14 and finishes at 0:44, although the whole dance is a bit longer than that. We did the arms a little different, and only one chaines (the turns in the second bit eg 0:32) instead of two, but its the same stuff. I'm really excited to be able to show you what I'm learning, although I don't imagine ever being at this sort of standard!!

The story of Coppelia is interesting - wikipedia can explain better than I can with such a rushed post! Have a look at it here. At the point of the Spanish dance, Swanhilda has gone into an inventor's workshop and pretended to be his mechanical doll, called Coppelia (after the inventor who's name is Doctor Coppelius) come to life (bit of imagination required of course). The Spanish dance, and the Scottish dance which follows (and is also in the clip) are just showing off really - no story, but very entertaining.

Anyway, that's all for now. Massive deadlines looming so very little time to write. My writing will improve when I have more time to draft posts! Sorry about it for now :(

Hugs and kisses

Feeling It Again

So today I'm not such a big fan of ballet stretch as I was yesterday. Today I am suffering the ache of stretched muscles. All of them. We did full body stretching so now I have full body aching. The effort involved in getting out of bed this morning was too great. So I put it off to this afternoon, and still feel achy. Warm bath for me this evening I think!!

One of the reasons I have started blogging about my ballet classes is because I have found a few other blogs from adult ballet beginners and they've been informative and encouraging :) But there's only a few of the. It's nice to read that other people are doing I'm doing and achieving a good degree of success, and they say lots of useful things about how to make progress as an adult beginner, how to talk to people about what you do, why you should wear a leotard and pink tights to class, and many other useful things.

So if you are interested, here are some linkies!

Adult Beginner is a woman in her 30s in America who has been taking classes for well over a year now. She still can't do a pirouette, even though she takes 2 classes a week at open level. This is a source of great relief. I thought I was a weirdo for being so bad at them, turns out I'd be a weirdo if I was doing it right after 6 weeks! She chatters like she's talking to a non-ballet friend. She likes to pass on crazy metaphors from her teacher (nicknamed Smirnoff, because he is Russian!) and she posts photos and sometimes cartoons. She also reviews books. She's hilarious, and I love her :)

David, of Dave Tries Ballet is another interesting character. He's 23, and has been doing ballet for a few months, but is ALREADY of a level to be performing on stage! Jeals. He's doing a small part in Coppelia with his dance school in Princeton. And he takes 6.5 hours of class a week! I wish I could take that many classes. Maybe then I would make as much progress. Or maybe I would just ache all the time! He tells us about his classes, about ballet more generally, and about ballets he goes to see. He also has some advice for brand new beginners as well. I like how much of a ballet nerd he is. It makes me feel a bit less crazy!

Henrik, who posts on Tights and Tiaras, is not a beginner at all, but I love the way he writes. He's not condescending at all and has a lot of really interesting information, including a series on the tools of the trade, and he's just posted the first part of a collaboration on partnering, which is really interesting.

There are a couple of others on my blog roll too, but these ones are my three favourites.

Love and Kisses

an Excellent Start to the Week

How does getting up at 6am to go to an 8am ballet class before a full day at uni, trip to the cinema, and then heading to the pub quiz and out dancing sound for a Monday? Like crazy? I know right.

I've never done such an early class before. Even at school we only had to be in by 8.35am! But this ballet thing has really caught my attention (as you may have noticed from yesterday's enormous post). I'm genuinely loving it, and I decided that I wanted to do *more ballet* than just the one hour a week. But I didn't want to tell you I was going to go to the early class, in case I failed to get up and then had to come and admit it to you.

But I did make it, so now I can tell you! In fact, I made it a whole 35 minutes early. Unlike all the normal people who kept it to a fairly sensible 10 or 15 minutes. I just wasn't sure exactly what the protocol was. So I thought I'd be too early rather than too late. Sitting in a changing room on your own for a while is far less embarassing that being the last one into class and not really prepared to begin!

But it wasn't like that at all. It wasn't even a ballet class, it's a stretching class using ballet style. So we did some things in first position, and second position, and we did plies, tendues and port de bras, and we held our arms in first, second and fifth positons. But we also did a lot of stuff not turned out, and there was no particular focus on ballet technique, it was just stylistic.

Anyway, as you would expect from a class named ballet stretch, we stretched a lot. My legs feel so long. I never understood the concept of feel the burn in stretching before now. I've felt the dull, pleasant ache of gentle stretching. But for example, we were sitting on the floor, legs out to the side as far as slits will go (I'm about 60 degrees tops. I'm pathetic at side splits) and then stretch forward as far as you can. Again this is about 60 degrees for me, and I can really feel it in the tendons in my legs. But then she was like breathe in, and as you breathe out slowly, push further down. So I did. And I was like streeeeeeetch. And then again, and then a third time. And then hold, but keep breathing and sink lower if you can. And the she came round the whole class one at a time, and gently pushed us from the shoulders and waist. Like, not shoving, just pressure, and I was a whole new world of bent over. It burns. But then when we stopped, it stopped burning. No pain. Just stretch. My legs really do feel long.
We also did front-back splits, and turns out what I thought was a pretty mediocre front-back split that I can do is actually kind of alright. I was by no means the lowest in the class, but also not the highest.

I worked really hard in class, came out sweating slightly, again, but had never moved faster than a gentle jog, and that was just at the start to get us warmed up.
And although I've only walked from the studio to uni, about 10 minutes, I feel taller, composed, well held. Quite frankly I feel gorgeous and leggy, which is not something I very often feel at 10 in the morning when I'm not wearing make up.

Ballet stretch is about to become a regular on my schedule :)

love and kisses

Adult Ballet Beginner

Hi everyone!

I am now an adult ballet beginner! How exciting is that! I've had six classes now and am starting to get the hang of some things! My balance is improving, my hands are becoming more graceful, and when I come out of class I'm ever so slightly sweaty! Nice.

I realised I wanted to learn to dance maybe five years ago now. I'm in an amateur variety show which is really good fun, and we have a dance cast within the main cast. It seemed like they got the cooler costumes, and they were more impressive. Plus if you could sing AND dance properly, at the same time, then it seemed you were nearly guaranteed a solo and a dance number. So I auditioned. Probably one of the most embarrassing experiences of my life. I had no idea how to dance, really struggled to pick up the steps because I was so unfamiliar with everything, plus everyone else seemed to have at least done some dance classes, so they had a vague idea of how to move around. After that I was totally put off wanting to dance, and was quite happy just being in the regular cast. Until the next year, when the directors decided to have the entire cast doing dance numbers. Obviously, not quite to the same standard as the "proper" dancers, but more than just the glorified actions we were doing before. And even though it was hard and I didn't always get it right off and it made me totally exhausted, the dance number was the highlight of that show! And now every year we do at least two main cast dance numbers, and they're always my favourite to perform. I've even started being put near the front sometimes, like where people can see me, which must mean I've been doing some things right.

Then last year my dressing room of 7 girls had 5 dancers in it, me, and this other girl, who'd also gone to that audition I had and hated the whole thing. And all week, I was just really envious of their costumes and how pretty they looked on stage, especially when they were doing ballet.

So I decided, right, that's it. I'm taking a ballet class. So now I'm taking a ballet class, and I absolutely adore it! I'm doing it with a friend, and unfortunately she's had to miss a couple of classes, so I'm not sure she's enjoying at as much because she feels behind everyone else. But I love it. I look forward to it all week. I used to practise the barre exercises at home every time I had a minute, although I have recently discovered that practising on your own as a beginner is a sure fire way to learn really bad technique, so now I've stopped. Instead I've been practising balancing, on one foot flat in passe (anyone know how to get accents on my e's?) and also on releve in first, second and fifth positions, and in passe.

I know right, get me!

Passe is when you have one foot (supporting leg) on the floor, turned out of course, and the other foot (working leg) is raised, out to the side again, and your foot is pointed so that your toes are just under your knee, like this.

This dancer is obviously en pointe, which is not something I do. No no. That takes a good few years of training, doing up to 10 hours of class a week and some exercises every day and stuff. But this is passe, and its the posture you typically use in pirrouettes (you know those, the twirly things), which I suck at. Practising the posture without turning builds the strength in your legs so that you can hold the pose better whilst turning, and therefore not wobble, flail and fall over.

Now, what about releve? That's easy, it's just standing on tip toes. Not pointe, like in the picture, but on the balls of your feet with your heels up. Like when you reach for something high up need to be a little taller. So I practise balancing on releve in first position, which is with both feet turned out to the side (from the HIPS, not the knees or ankles), and heels together, if you were standing flat. I also practise in second position, which is with the feet about a foot apart when flat, but still turned out, heels pointing towards each other. Fifth position is with the feet crossed over, so that (in theory) you make an = sight, with heels touching toes. Lots of people find they can do this, but they are often rolling out their ankles. This is how to injure yourself in ballet. As a beginner, I'm good with my fifth position looking more like > or <, with the heel of the front foot touching the toe of the back foot. As the turnout muscles in my thighs and bum get stronger, my turn out will improve without the risk of injury! To do a proper fifth position releve, our teacher tells us to bring our toes towards each other as we lift up, so that our heels are crossed over. We do this at the end of our barre sequences, raising the outer arm to fifth (just forward, but above the head, gently curved like the dancer above), and when we have balance, we have to bring the barre arm up as well, and hold for 8 counts.

So, that was a bit of a ramble, I hope you'll forgive me! But I am finding ballet very absorbing, and extremely exciting! I'm considering, now that my weekly uni classes have stopped (for ever! I have no more before I graduate) I might try fitting in an extra class - the studio I go to has drop in classes - ballet stretch on a Monday at 8am, or gentle ballet, which is an hour and half, on Fridays mid morning, which seems much less offensive. But my regular class is on a Friday night, so I feel it might be better to embrace Monday mornings, and get my week off to a good start! lol

Love and Kisses

Statue of Liberty Headdress Tutorial

Happy New Year everyone! How are things?

I was at a fancy dress party last night for a friend's 21st! It was really good fun :D

I ordered a costume off the internet, which arrived the morning after the party. Useful huh! So I spent the afternoon before the party preparing an alternative costume - I went as the Statue of Liberty. I already had a dress in the right colour so it was the spikey headdress I had to recreate using things I already had in the house and with only a few hours.

In the end I used half a large cereal box, some greeny blue card, an old greeny blue tshirt, scrap paper, needle and thread, double sided foam tape (or PVA glue as an alternative, but that's messy!) and a glue stick.

To start with, I used a bit of string to figure out how big my head was from ear to ear, where a hairband would sit. I used this to help me draw a rough arch the shape of the top of my head. Above this I then drew in the spikes, although not all the way to my ears. To make it symmetrical I just drew half, on a piece of folded paper. Cut out your paper template.

Unfold and stick it down on one side of the cereal box. Use a craft knife and rule for the spikes if you have them, or just old-school scissors. Don't cut right up to the curve at the bottom, leave about half an inch - we will need to make tabs from it.

Cut this strip lots of times to make tabs, and score them lightly at the top. Fold alternate ways.

Place your template onto the bluey green card, hopefully you will have a big enough piece to cover the whole thing in a oner. I didn't, so I did the best I could and then filled in the gaps afterwards. Bend all the tabs one way so that you can draw the head-shaped curve in the right place. Alternative you could have thought ahead and used the paper template to cut the curved shape. Just cut the curve first, and stick it on, and cut around the spikes with your craft knife/scissors. Repeat for the other side.

Choose one side to be the front and use the scrap card to make three large diamonds as decoration, to give the design a hint of depth.

Next, cut a strip out of cardboard the length of your ear-to-ear that you figured out before, and twice as wide as the tabs are long. Refold the tabs alternately. Cover the strip in glue from your glue stick, and press it in to the curve, and persuade all the tabs to stick down. Use some bits of string (or the discarded hems from a tshirt you chopped for another project, like me) to tie around the headdress to keep it in place while the glue does its thing.

Whilst waiting for the glue, get that old tshirt and lop off the hem. Cut off a band from the middle which is a little over twice the width of the card strip you've just been working with. Slice the hems so you have two bits of fabric, about 2 and a half inches wide, and long enough to wrap at least half way round your head - it depends how big your tshirt was really.

Take one of these pieces, fold it in half longways - like a hotdog bun - and sew up a tube. Turn it right side out before anyone sees your really wonky stitching. Also try to hide the fact that you didn't cut straight and so your tube is very skinny at one end.

If you are hand sewing, this will take you ages, and so your glue should be fine. Untie the string, and get your foam tape. Put a strip of it along the middle of the headband, on the head side. Stick your second piece of fabric to this tap,making sure there is enough to fold up and round on both sides, and both ends are covered. The photo isn't super clear - I'm sorry, I was in a hurry!

Then place strip of tape on either side of the card spikes, on top, and fold the fabric up and around. Don't worry it's a little to wide - it's home made fancy dress so you make up the rules.

Fold the ends under and sew them down. Remember that no one will see this, so be as messy as you like!

Next, take that long skinny tube from before and sew it on at one side. I sewed all the way round to reinforce a bit better. Unfortunately you can't do this with a machine, but it only takes a minute or two.

Tie your hair in a pony tail. Sit the hairband on top of your head, and bring the strap round the back of your head and up beside your ear. If your fabric is stretchy, pull it tight enough to stay on, without squeezing so it gives you a headache. Mark how long your tube needs to be - probably a lot shorter than the tube you just spent ages sewing, but such is life. You could measure this before hand and save yourself the trouble. Trim off the extra bit and sew the end in place on the other side. Because my tube is wonky, this side was wider so I was able to attach like this, which looks slightly neater. Keep the stiches on the sides small because they will be just visible.

And that is all you have to do! Now go out and show off your home made headdress. A long blue/green dress, a torch (or a wine glass) and a book to carry around will complete your outfit :) And when the party is over, remember you can wear your crown all the time in front of your computer because no one will see you and you can pretend you are queen of the world :D

Pretzels

So today I made pretzels! The nice doughy German kind that you can never get here except when the German market pitches up for Christmas. I found the recipe online, at bittersweetbaker, and made a few dinky changes to suit me.

To make the Dough you need:

1.5 cups warm water

1tbsp sugar

2.5 tsp salt

2.25 tsp instant yeast

22oz plain (all purpose) flour

4tbsp butter, melted (which means you measure it then you melt it)

vegetable oil

Combine water, sugar, salt and yeast in a bowl and stir slowly until dissolved. You may have to squish little clumps of yeast which form. Then add the flour and melted butter and mix until it comes together. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and knead for about 5 minutes until the dough is smooth. Then transfer into a lightly oiled bowl and cover with cling film (plastic wrap). Leave it somewhere warm for 50-55 min, until its about doubled in size.

Preheat the oven to 220 C (or 450 F) and put 5 cups of water on to boil. Divide the dough into 8 pieces and roll each one into a 24-inch (60cm) snake. Curl the ends round to make a circle

Then cross the ends over and tuck them round to make that classic knot shape

Lay them out on trays lined with NON STICK or GREASED BAKING PAPER. Not greaseproof paper like me. Greaseproof paper is not non-stick. It is about un-non-stick as you can get, apparently.

Anyway, by now your oven should be hot and your water boiling. Add 1/3 cup bicarbonate of soda/sodium bicarbonate/baking soda to the water. It looks awesome.

Then place each pretzel in, one at a time, for 30 seconds each. This is the part that's going to make them nice and hard on the outside!

Although at the moment they'll just be weird and slimy. My dough cracked because I'm rubbish at rolling dough snakes. Don't be like me. Or do, because the cracks wind up looking kind of cool, as you will see later on.

Next mix up 1 egg yolk and 1tbsp water and brush it all over the tops of your boiled pretzels, for colour and shine. If you like crunchy salt crystals, sprinkle over some kosher salt at this point. Beware making them too salty though - you may wish to cut down on the salt in the dough.

Then put the trays in the preheated oven for 12-14 minutes, turning half way through. Also swap them top to bottom, so that one lot don't brown too much and the other not enough.

Cool them for at least five minutes so as not to burn your poor fingers, then eat warm, or save them for later. Good with butter and cheese or ham. I've never tried them with anything sweet, but given the recent trend of salty chocolate (weirdos) then I suppose they might be good with chocolate spread or dipped in melted.

And DON'T forget to use NON STICK PAPER unless you want to go without the bottom layer of crust, which is just as yummy as the top layer.

*EDIT*: Hi guys. I have corrected the amount of salt in the recipe and made things slightly clearer about the salt crystals you typically see on these pretzels.
Also, I was at the German Christmas Market the other day and bought an authentic German pretzel and found the flavour to be a bit different from these. Will have to make another batch and do some comparisons to see how I can make this recipe more like the real German ones!

Dreams and My "Calling"

My whole entire life I have always wanted to be the best at all the things I did, including things that I wasn't very good at. Some things I have come to accept. I will never be good at running or sports, and as such will never be very fit. And although I think it would be brilliant to climb Mount Everest and stand on top of the world, I'm never going to get there without some serious motivation from some outside source.

On the other hand there are plenty of things I can do reasonably well, like writing, cooking and graphic design, which I wish I had the time to do more often and therefore get better at, but because I'm not that great in the first place, I don't think that any of them will ever be a career for me, or even a means to support myself. So these activities get pushed aside in favour of ones which are in the long run more economically productive. And that is why I never write much on my blog, why I rarely make new dishes, and why I don't do digital scrapbooking any more.

And then there are things which I am pretty good at. Maths, logical thinking and academia. And the problem there as that those things aren't colourful and pretty and creative. And colours and prettiness and creativity are the things that I would love to be able to base my entire lifestyle around. But instead I'm going to be a scientist, because that's what I'm good at. I'm not sure there's anyway to make clinical psychology very pretty or colourful. But when (if) I get there, I'll let you know.

And then there are a few things that I've never tried but would love to try. Most importantly motherhood. People talk about having a calling and I always struggled with that idea because I could never find something I wanted to do my whole entire life. Because in school they want you to pick a career, which makes good sense really, now that women don't go directly from parents to husband without ever having to support themselves entirely. And of course married women have careers too. Wonderful ones. And that's great and I was up for that. Except that I didn't know what to do. Journalism was something which appealed to me greatly for a long time. But then I realised I actually wasn't very good at English. So I couldn't be a journalist.

I looked through a really big book in school one day which basically listed a ton of careers. I was sure that eventually I would find one that fit me. The best I could do was a speech and language therapy. I thought I was set. And then I discovered that they also teach people how to eat and swallow, after brain injury or whatever, and they have to put their hands in peoples mouths and stuff. And I was like no thank you. If I wanted to put my hands in peoples' mouths I'd be a dentist.

So I was back to square one with no career. And so I picked subjects that I enjoyed and I went to uni and I did Classical Studies. And I picked Psychology because I like people and I thought it might be fun. And I fell in love with the subject, so that's what I do now. And I want to be a Clinical Psychologist not because it's colourful and pretty like I crave. But because it's helpful, you get to look after people. And I realised that that is what I want to be good at. I want to be great at looking after people.

And most importantly I want my very own little people to look after. If I could get married tomorrow to the "perfect man" who ever that is, and have babies and babies, then I would be delighted. I can't think of anything I want more than to have children and to raise them and love them and teach them to be good, loving people, who get a lot out of life and who will want the very best for me when I can't look after myself any more, never mind anyone else. I want children so much that even at the age of 21 I have said to every one of my friends that if they ever get pregnant by accident, and don't want an abortion for whatever reason, I would adopt that baby and love it like my own without a second thought. And I know that I'm at university, and I'm trying to get a degree, and a career, and a husband, so that I can have a lovely home and then stay there looking after my kids and not having to work. And if someone was to hand me a baby tomorrow, that would mess up the plan a bit. But it's not about the house really, its about that kid. I want to be a great mum. I want my kids to be the best kids.

I read a lot of blogs my women who are stay-at-home mums who cook and who homeschool their children and who get to write and be creative and have beautiful homes and who take fabulous photos and who can make digital scrapbook pages til the cows come home (literally for some) and I want that. I know it's pretty weird at my age and stage of life. But I'm almost jealous of the girls from my year at school who stopped school when they were 16, got pregnant, even by accident, and are now raising families. And yeah its really hard for them because they don't have a lot of money, and a lot of them are single mums, but there's a whole part of me that wishes I had that too. I'd take the hardship and not being able to go out and not having any kind of a career and all of that if I could have kids to look after. I know it's a little crazy. Sorry. You'll have to deal with that.

It's probably a good thing I was raised like I was because otherwise that could be exactly where I am right now. And I might hate it. And that would be horrible. I know that it is far more sensible to focus on some form of a career just now, because kids are expensive, and to wait until I'm in a stable relationship with someone who I love and am married to, because that security is important. I just wish sometimes I could fast-forward to the days where I have a little kitty, a big dog, a baby boy on my hip, twin girls playing together with friends, and two wonderful teenagers who don't find me *too* embarrassing, a loving husband, dinner in the oven, vegetables in the garden, and fresh flowers and my own photography embellishing my cosy family home.

Oh well, I'm sure I'll have plenty of fun on the way

And what about you, trusty, invisible reader? Do you have any dreams? Where do you wish you could fast-forward to in your life