Kathy, that is really cool.

Kathy, that is really cool.

I know! Swimming was always something that she wanted to learn, as well as playing an instrument and getting involved in sports, but going to Catholic school K-12 meant that none of that happened during schooltime, and being a farmer's daughter meant that she had no time for any of that extracurricularly. One of her bitterest regrets was that, due to her lack of time for afterschool clubs and sports in high school, she didn't get named to the National Honors Society even though she had the grades necessary.

I've never been able to learn "correct" swimming, because I couldn't clear my sinuses by blowing. So I manage a breast stroke that keeps my head above the water, or a back stroke that does the same thing.

I wish I could learn to snorkel or scuba, but I understand that sinus issues might make that sketchy as well.

WTF is with the square dancing? I too had to do it in jr. high and it was so painful. Is this some kind of collaborative sadism on the part of the nation's gym teachers?

Tickybox is too cute for for words, and I need to plan another weekend up in Seattle soon.

YES! Yes you do.

Plei, maybe the last weekend in January or the last one in February?

If you think about it, square dancing is just walking to a specific place to the beat, so it teaches being able to listen and respond to instructions and coordination even to those who have two left feet.

In my school, we square danced in gym every year from 4th grade to senior year. I really liked the dancing, but the partner picking was excrutiating until I made some male friends. They just should have made us count off or something. In high school I also square danced at open square dances at a local college with a string band and caller, and I loved it (my firend's mom wanted to take her foreign exchange student, and then we just kept going!). If I had a partner, I would gladly do it again-- it was a ball.

I tap danced for 10 years and jazz danced for 5, but was only decent. I am a good musical theatre dancer.

I can sing on key, I think, and have a decent voice-- I was in the chorus of Bye, Bye Birdie and Bells are ringing in high school, as well as being one of Reno Sweeney's Angel's in Anything Goes and Gloria Thorpe (female sports reporter) in Damn Yankees. I was in chorus, band and vocal ensemble all four years of high school. The one year I auditioned and made all county chorus it was cancelled-- I was so dissappointed. And then, strangely I gave up singing and dancing

If you think about it, square dancing is just walking to a specific place to the beat, so it teaches being able to listen and respond to instructions and coordination even to those who have two left feet.

I had square dancing in 9th and 10th grade PE class. I sucked. I think I got a D one year and a B- or C the other. I just couldn't remember the steps, despite trying my best.

If you think about it, square dancing is just walking to a specific place to the beat, so it teaches being able to listen and respond to instructions and coordination even to those who have two left feet.

And it's not a sport, so you don't get into winners and losers. At least, not if they don't make you find your own partner (ew, Sophia!).

Can you play any instrument?

Nope. I did teach myself to play "Taps" on a harmonica though.

Hold a tune when singing?

Only because I've been singing lullabies to Emmett for nine years.

I do think there are varying abilities with eye-hand coordination, but very few people are really so deficient that they can't be taught to catch a ball. Mostly it's repetition and practice. Same with hitting. Emmett had thousands and thousands of swings with a whiffle bat before he ever played baseball.

I've danced with Jesse and Ple so their assertions that they cannot dance do not persuade me. The Ple dance had her wedged in between me and Amych during "Red Right Hand." That's a happy memory.

Who can draw?