Two years ago, when I returned to ballet class after a hiatus of about two decades, I think my intention was basically to get back into shape and to shake off, for once and for all, my conflicted emotions about my previous life as a dancer. Things I swore at the time that I would never do: perform on stage, go on pointe again, get obsessed with my extension. So much for all that.

Recently, I decided to stop spending time and money shopping for new leotards online, and turned to the world of the ballet blog. A little searching turned up a bevy of older-than-twenty-five ballet websites, and I even read about a fifty year old who had gone back to dance after thirty years, thus beating me by a decade. So here's my entry into the balletblogosphere.

Just the facts:
I am

• 43 years old
• a college professor (art history!)
• the mother of two (one dances)
• an avid downhill skier (secret carefully concealed from my ballet teachers twenty years ago)
• married fourteen years
• living in a small town in the rural west that fortunately has a nice little civic ballet company