Drip drip drop little Bridal shower.....

I went to my first Bridal Shower this week,

i think Bridal Showers are mainly an American thing right?

Anyhows,

my first Bridal Shower also happened to me mine....

which made it even more exciting.

And look at this amazing cake that one of the ladies made....

Its going to be even better than my wedding cake 

(Tim's mum is making my wedding cake....

i have neither seen nor eaten any of her cakes so cant really judge them....yet)

Dress Stress.....

So, mostly i've been enjoying my wedding planning.

The internet seems to help, it requires very little human being contact,

and i hate to say it but cutting out having to deal with human beings is very pleasurable.

Give me a robot any day!

But, the last couple of days has seen some serious Dress Stress.

I'm not joking, Bridezilla appeared and she was not a pretty sight.

i'm that literally,

 i actually broke out into rash at one point yesterday whilst dealing with my dress maker.

As i mentioned before i decided to have my dress made.

i asked the Head of the Costume Department of the Opera House if she would make it,

and my big sister designed it from a collage of pictures that i sent her.

It didnt start off too well, when i couldn't get the dressmaker to actually come to any appointments that i had made with her. i and seriously re-considered and did a lot of looking at dresses on the internet and what not, but in the long run it was going to be cheaper making it here, and also, after having the option of designing my own dress, the thought of buying one of a rack seemed so disappointing.

So eventually the dressmaker started working.

But let it please be known that my dressmaker only speaks Russian.

This has made the whole process even more difficult as it means i have had to entirely rely on a friend of mine to come to every fitting with me....poor girl....

Although it has been handy that i can just pop in and check the progress of the dress between rehearsals.

The dress was meant to be finished 5 days ago 

because i will fly home this week and plan to take the dress with me.

Knowing the dressmaker and her typical way of working is to finish everything at last minute (its not uncommon to be handed costumes the day of performance), i gave her a deadline a couple of days before i actually needed it.

So on thursday , they day it was meant to be finished, it was not remotely finished.

I told her she could extend it to Sunday.

So on Saturday i went for a fitting and it was beginning to look like an actual dress (beginning)

and yesterday when i went to pick it up.....

well lets just say it wasnt finished.

Bridezilla appeared.

Things were sewn in angry haste.

The dress is unfiitting and unprofessional looking.

In fact i've booked an appointment with another dressmaker to undo some of the botch ups.

I had to go in this morning and buy extra material and wait whilst she made another part of the dress,

now 6 days after the initial deadline

I fly out tomorrow and i thought i would have a finished dress, 

i currently have pieces of dresses, 

some that need to be refitted, some that still need to be attached....

ect ect...

I'm mainly sad because i think picking up my dress should be a happy exciting experience,

and the moment it makes me so upset and angry that i cant even look at it.

its in the suitcase and i dont want to see it again until i've calmed down,

and then i hope that i will like it again,

as currently all the excitement has been drained out of me.

I havent paid her the full amount of money that we agreed on,

but she doesnt know that yet, 

and thats something i'm going to have to deal with later....

tomorrow....

after all tomorrow is another day....

(although i must say, through out it all and all my stresses, 

real ones or over-exaggerated ones my fiancee has been amazing.

 He calms me down and doesnt make me feel like i'm crazy nuts 

and i'm so happy i'm not scaring him away!!!!!)

Performing....

(picture)

This week we had some performances.

Having now closed my contract here i wasn't cast in so much,

 that's just the way the cookie crumbles,

 if i'm not going to be around next year they don't want to teach me a role 

and then have to re-teach it to someone new if they perform it again next season.

Fortunately,

 i still dance a little bit. 

One of the pieces i dance was in Thierry Malandain's Danses Qu'on Croises.

This ballet is not in pointe shoes and is not so technically demanding,

 in fact it is a short comedic piece that is more character driven than anything else.

It was actually quite a pleasure to go on stage and

 not to worry too much about the steps and instead just get lost in the character, 

not worrying how my technique is

or if i'm gong to make my pirouettes....

I've always enjoyed the acting side of ballet. 

I know some dancers struggle with it, but for me its always been one of the biggest pleasures. 

To go on stage and just be someone else.

The Captain and Me.....Chocolate Cake

Somewhere in the next few weeks that followed 

our unofficial first date i started to fancy Captain Tim

I dont remember how many times we met inbetween 

but i still remember that day that turned it around for me.

And that day had a lot to do with chocolate cake.

i cant remember why, 

but for some reason we had decided at some point that we had to go eat cake.

 it was definitely my idea.

oh i remember now,

 it was because he had never been to Svezda....

only the best cake shop in Ljubljana.

so one Saturday he texted me and reminded me that we had a 'cake date'

 i remember asking him if he was taking me for cake or we were baking a cake, 

as i couldnt remember the agreement.

 He said we could do both.

Well let me tell you for starters that was a good answer to begin to muzzle your way into my heart.

Anyhows, 

i remember the moment.

 we were sitting in the cafe, 

and we had both ordered slices of different chocolate cakes

 and his cake was way better than mine...

and so i proceeded pretty much to eat all of his cake after whilst simultaneously devouring mine...

and he didnt mind a bit.

And i distinctly remember thinking to myself,

'Wow, i could actually really like this guy'

Oh yes, i am that easy.

the secret to the enigma of dating Rebekah is out there,

let me eat your slice of chocolate cake along with my own and i'm all yours.

Then we went shopping for ingredients to make chocolate brownies.

But let me warn you, 

this was back before i had any real interest in baking or cooking,

in fact if i recall rightly i went into the supermarket 

and guessed what ingredients might be in a Brownie 

and then we went back to his place and i mixed up the ingredients by the ratio

 of what were my favourite ingredients (sugar and chocolate) 

against what i didnt like so much (flour).

Oh yes they were a disaster.

And yet.....

he kindly told me that the plate of cooked chocolate sugar was great, 

and proceeded to eat the whole thing.

And yet again, 

i thought....

'hmmmmm....he's quite nice'

Enigma no.2-

Eat my crappy cooking with genuine enough 

zeal and i'm yours.

The Captain and Me....First Date....

After the new years party i didnt see Captain Tim again for a long time....

like 5 months.

Honestly i didnt even give him so much as a thought.

I was preoccupied.

And then one afternoon I called up My French Friend and met him for lunch,

it had been a while since i had seen him too.

Over lunch i tried to persuade told him to climb Smarna Gora,

a local hill/mountain with me. in Slovenian there is a word that describes something between a hill and a mountain, its a whole other entity, i think we need that word

but okay okay, its more of a hill than a mountain, but for a girl who never hikes it was a mountain.

He told me that Captain Tim often went there to climb maybe i should go with him.

i forgot about it afterwards....

until a few weeks later the new Star Trek movie was coming out and i wanted to go see it.

i'm the kind of gal who goes to the movies alone, i enjoy it, i dont feel the need to go in a group or with someone.....but sometimes there are movies that if you went to see alone then you would feel like a proper looser, Star Trek for me falls into that category.

Having recently just watched some of the old movies i had really gotten into

 it and was looking forward to seeing it but new i couldnt go alone. 

i also new that i would have to find the right person to ask to go with me....

i mean i recognise that Star Trek is an acquired taste, 

but then i remembered that Captain Tim on his wall in his apartment 

had a framed picture of Star Wars...

anyone who has  a framed Star Wars picture is a good bet right?

i was right.

i texted him and asked if he wanted to go.

So technically i asked him out on our first date, although at the time it was a completely unromantical invite....if i actually fancied a guy i would never in a million years ask him out.

He said yes and also said that My French Friend had mentioned to him that him that i wanted to climb Smarna Gora so why didnt we do that before hand.

So we did.

It was quite funny, about 6months into dating we re-climbed Smarna Gora,

 and  we climbed it in double the time we climbed it in on that first date.

 Both of us had been rushing up to the top, trying to impress the other that we were fit and healthy, 

both of us actually wanting to slow down and gasp for air, we laughed about it in hindsight.

We climbed the mountain (ok, mini-mountain)

Went to the movies.

Went for Mexican food 

and ate ice cream on a stolen boat

and still at the end of it i didnt fancy him,

but i did have a great time.

And i guess thats good, because when i fancy a guy, i normally do and say stupid things. 

i screw it up.

i crack under the pressure.

it took me a little bit longer to realise that being this happy and relaxed around a person so quickly and easily  is a good thing, and maybe i should pursue it further....

i'm glad we did!

(photos from our first date...sometimes i'm glad i carry my picture everywhere with me...you never know what memories you might inadvertently capture)

Picture Heavy.....

The last couple of posts have been pretty word heavy.

So i thought i'd put in one that was a bit picture heavy for a break.

These are pictures my friend took for me during my last performance of Swan Lake

Last ever....?.....

(click on images to see them larger)

The Captain and Me...The Inbetweeners....

It was 5 months after our first meeting and before our first date....

i guess it wasnt love at first sight.

There were two Inbetweeners.

The first time we met inbetween was when MFF

 had a dinner party and we were both invited.

This was only a couple of weeks after our initial meet.

let's just say things had gotten a bit awkward between me and MFF.

i think he had invited me to the dinner party not really expecting me to come 

(in fact he planned it when i was working but then i got injured and 

had some free time at the last minute)

but i wanted to go to try and resume our 'normal friendship level'.

needless to say it was all a bit awkward, 

but what i do remember was when Captain Tim arrived

i sat up on the couch i had been lounging around on 

and was exceedingly happy that he had arrived.

it felt like a breath of fresh air in the stagnated room.

I dont remember many other details about the night

(other than i had to tell MFF that i didnt eat fish which 

of course the only thing he had cooked...

cue more awkwardness)

But i do remember at one point someone saying to me and Captain tim,

'you two are made for each other'

Which of course produced an awkward silence in the room,

and me thinking....really?

Captain Tim drove me home that night.

Apparently (he told me at a later date) he thought he was going to get a goodnight kiss as i left the car.

Which i scoff at him for because the thought didnt even cross my mind....

not once....

The second time we met was again just a couple of weeks later

Captain Tim called me up to know if i knew of any hip 

New Year Parties to go to...

it was the day before New Years Eve and i had pretty much decided that that year my New Years plans would be to go to bed early

(I'm not a fan of the New Year celebrations, it just doesnt resonate in me)

Telling him no,

he then decided to throw a mini-party at his 

house as he had some fellow Brits in town for a visit he needed to entertain and invited me along.

Having already declared that i was plannless 

i didnt have any excuses to turn him down,

so i went along,

i had my friend call me at half past midnight to 'invite' me to a party at her house if 

i needed an escape route.

Turns out i didnt.

( i just found pictures from the New Years Party on fbook)

The Captain and Me....the day we met...

i thought its about time i catalogued some of me and my finance's

 (still cant get used to that) important moments.

I'm a terrible diary keeper and have never actually written any of it down, and i have a feeling i better do so before my memory paints its even more different than it already has.

whenever i write down things about the two of us and send it to Captain Tim, he always disagrees with my 'versions' of things. But he does have an appalling memory that i would never trust in a million years....

THE DAY WE MET

It was December. 

It was raining.

A lot.

I remember i had left an activity at my church a bit early to go to My French Friends (MFF) birthday party.

I didnt really know where the bar was where i was meant to be heading and i remember walking through the rain, it was a dark evening. I came across the old roman wall which i had heard existed in Ljubljana but had yet to see.

Finally i found my destination.

I didnt know anyone at the party other than The Birthday Boy.

We had met in a Beginners Slovene class about 9 months earlier.

Not knowing anyone meant a lot of introductory small talk all night long, i hate that, dont you?

After having been there a while i heard an English accent. Having live in slovenia now for nigh on 4 years this was the first British sounding voice i had ever really heard there. I honed in on it and made conversation.

Also rather happy at finding a fellow Brit he excitedly asked me the question, 'Don't you just miss salt and vinegar crisps?' 

i dont particularly like salt and vinegar crisps so the answer was no.

He had a girl with him, a tiny little girl who was writing a dissertation on the lingustics of translating Harry Potter into Russian, or something like that She tried to get me to join her choir.

To this day i've never been able to get any solid information out of Tim as to who this girl was when asked....hmmmmm....

I remember i was wearing my brown long sweater. I know this because i was nervously playing with my amber beads which i only ever wear with that sweater. i know this because i remember him making fun of me for playing with them.

It ended up just the four of us with everybody else having headed home.

Me, MFF, Captain Tim and the Harry Potter girl.

We stood outside in the rain under two umbrellas to wait for the taxi.

Me and MFF under one umbrella. Captain Tim and Harry Potter girl under the other.

In the taxi Captain Tim sat in the front.

The mood was jolly and happy with the others being jovial and a little bit tipsy.

We dropped off the Harry Potter girl.

I remember Captain Tim jestily ripping into the taxi driver who at one point Captain Tim congratulated on 'making an excellent 24 point turn'.

Tim got out next.

MFF started flirting with me in the back of the taxi as we headed towards my house.

I thought it was a little strange as he had never shown me any hints of being interested in me before,

and i really hadnt thought about him in that way at all, but what the heck, 

i put it down to his slight intoxication.

I got out and went home happy having met a fellow Brit in Slovenia. 

Seeing as neither of can remember when we actually had our first date (sometime in May)

 we hold that day as our 'anniversary' mainly because 

facebook reminds us its our French Friends birthday.

getting to know you....

since around the time of our wedding Captain Tim isnt going to be able to take too much time off work 

we are planning a mini-moon directly after the wedding before we can get our full honeymoon

later on in the year.

Just a few days alone in a cottage in the Scottish Highlands.

So we've looked into quite a few places.

Some too expensive

Some not rural enough.

ect. ect.

We whittled it down to three possibilities, 

and have started writing back and forth to them to find out more about their rentals.

One in particular we like because it was on a llama farm.

Not that either of us are particularly animal people, 

more just because i like the thought of telling people i'm going to a llama farm.

We wrote to them a couple of times,

 to be honest their reviews on tripadvisor werent the best so we asked 

for them to 'defend' some of the things that were written there.

After being fully satisfied with their answers

 we asked if we could book our mini-moon.

To which they replied to us,

if we really wanted to they would book us in, 

but hadnt we ever thought about going to Greece on our honeymoon? t

he weather is nice and the people there are much friendlier.

Eh?

Ok?

I'm sure they would like us if they got to know us.

(p.s thanks for all your lovely comments on the last post)

retirement.....

So this week i did it.

I went into my directors office and handed in my two months notice.

My resignation.

It's strange, this feeling that soon i wont be a ballerina,

its such a big part of who i am, its embedded within my identity.

i started ballet classes at the age of 2 years old and now at the ripe old age of 27

there has barely been a week gone by where i havent done some sort of dancing or at least stretching.

but i feel like its time.

A new name,

a new person,

a new me.

i've spent the last 10years as a professional dancer.

The first couple fighting my way through rounds of endless auditions,

wondering if i was ever really good enough.

wondering if i would ever make it.

and then i got a job in a lovely company 

in Slovenia

where i spent 5 years, mostly happy.

i loved the company and the country and made great friends,

but always felt like they under appreciated me

and left me with pretty low self-esteem.

A sudden jolt and i have spent the last two years in a country and company

that dont quite have the same place in my heart as slovenia did,

but as a career move it has done wonders for me.

Dancing as a soloist i finally feel like i have achieved 

what i always wanted to achieve.

And sure i could go on here.

People (especially my mother) like to remind me all the time that,

'i am living the dream'

But dreams change.

I have new dreams now.

i dream of being a wife and a mother 

and the new and exciting adventures that it will bring.

and yes, 

i feel nostalgic,

and at times i wonder if i can really do this.

the unknown frightens me.

But i wont be doing it alone,

i'll be doing it with a guy who makes every day feel like home.

but i guess i also feel worn out and tired for the 

daily fight for perfection that ballet ensues.

and i guess recently i've felt like i've given up on the battle.

it just doesnt seems as important to me anymore.

and all in all it just doesnt feel s fulfilling anymore.

Those fleeting moments on stage.

they are so far and in between,

and most of the time i feel so discontent with myself anyway.

when i told my director she didnt understand the concept that this was it.

that i wasnt going to be looking for a new job.

so i told her i was just taking a break,

and i would keep it up and when we settled down i would look for work again.

But i lied.

Maybe it will change but right now,

i'm done.

And her enthusiasm that i had so much more to give 

helped me, she didnt see me as a has been.

and i look at some old dancers in the company,

and i see that they have never been able to stop.

They have sacrificed everything for this life of ballet

and never been able to break free,

they fight on although their bodies are far past their prime.

and i never want to be like that.

I think of Darcey Bussell.

She made that decision, she had a family and kept on working for a while

and then just turned her back on it all.

 In the end sooner or later you have to break those ties.

And in my opinion if you do it too late your going to miss out on a whole 

life that happens outside of the shenigans of a ballet studio.

And i will miss it,

with all my heart i will miss it.

I already feel the void as i start to prepare myself.

and perhaps a little part of me will die.

but in the words of peter pan,

'to die will be an awfully big adventure'

(pictures of me by Vicente perez)