Can Can!

My very first showgirl job was at the Moulin Rouge in Paris. I was straight out of college and had absolutely not been prepared for what was to be expected of me. I was hired as a covered dancer, for which the punishment was the Can Can...

The biggest shock of all when I first watched the show, which at the time was named "Femmes, femmes, femmes", was not the bare breasted ladies but the bare bottomed everyones! Having never been exposed to a G-string and worn my ballet leotards around my knees, seeing that many buttocks all on one stage was quite overwhelming.

The Can Can was absolutely terrifying. Twenty girls on stage kicking, cartwheeling, screaming, and jump splitting...horrendous! At the time the master of the Can Can was an Italian bast...I mean gentleman, named Ruggiero. He seemed adorable at my audition but after my first Can Can rehearsal I realized that the charm was a cover for the torture he enjoyed inflicting.

Every day we would rehearse for three hours with the relentless Italian and a chair that he dragged around like a bullfighter and made us kick over. We'd cartwheel for hours, then learn to cabriole, (sort of a split legged handstand) and finally cathedral, which is balancing your foot on your partners foot while it is extended at eye level then holding hands and arching backwards...while avoiding the other girls that are spinning and cartwheeling around you.

I did eventually master and enjoy the Can Can once I got over my fear and realized the only way to get through it was to scream at the top of my lungs...but had a few other problems on my first contract at the red mill...

At the top of the show four of us would descend on an elevator from the ceiling as our beautiful and talented vedette, Debbie, sang to the unsuspecting audience. To pre-set on the elevator and be stored in the ceiling, we had to climb a ladder. Well, one day I climbed the ladder a little late and in my haste tripped...and fell about thirty feet on to the stage where Debbie was singing.

Debbie turned around astonished to be joined by such an ungainly sight (thank goodness I didn't actually land on her) and I jumped up mortified and ran back up the stairs to rejoin my elevator mates. I noticed a few audience members pointing and looking shocked, but thought I'd just scared them, and kept on dancing, it didn't cross my mind that I might be hurt, until my dance captain yanked me off the stage and pointed out the deep gash exposing the bone above my knee. I promptly passed put and was rushed to the emergency room for 42 stitches...at least it got me out of the Can Can for a while!

Bottoms up!

Something I don't talk about very often is my time as a Realtor...in Las Vegas.

Yep, I was one of THOSE Realtors who sold houses at the peak of the bubble and have since watched almost all of my clients see their home values dwindle to half what they paid.

Great fun!

Well, actually, it was fun at the time. Vegas was growing rapidly, everyone was making great money working on the Strip, which was thriving, and we all felt we'd got a good grasp on the American dream.

Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all-Samuel Butler

I used to love looking at all the brand new models of homes and seeing them built from the ground up...in about three weeks.

Anyway, I once had an extremely wealthy client who wanted to build a custom home on a plot of land surrounding Lake Las Vegas. The lake is very pretty but is a rather strange hue of green, as the gardeners in Vegas spray the grass green and the run-off from the sprinklers turns the lake into an emerald swamp.

My client was a huge texan who wore a stetson and told me in no uncertain terms to "flip a bitch" when he thought I should be doing a "U" turn. Let's just say he was challenging.

I drove my client out to see several lots that were on a hill overlooking the lake...in August, so it was only about 105 degrees outside. Lovely!

We were visiting one particular lot that was on the first shelf up from the lake, and I was walking around with the client, trying hard not to pass out from sun stroke, imagining the floor plan he had chosen resting on the land. He was quite taken with the view and I became rather enthusiastic about the possibilities.

We started talking about where the pool should go and he asked me if I thought it'd be good to put it right on the edge of the property to give the impression that the water tipped over the edge of the pool in to the lake.

"Ooooh that'd be great!" I gushed as I trotted over to the very edge of the lot.

I should add at this point that I was wearing a rather flimsy skirt, and high heels...oh yes, and a G-string.

I looked over the edge of the land and stared down a near vertical drop which I was soon to get to know intimately.

The ground...remember we are in the desert...beneath my feet suddenly disintegrated and I found myself shuttling feet first on my bottom toward the lake. When I eventually skidded to a halt, I was knee deep in bright green water, my knickers full of sand, with a very draughty rear end, as there was no back remaining to my skirt.

I shot up and spun around, desperately trying to cover my derriere, to wave up to my astonished looking client. I actually said "I'm fine...I'll be right there" as if nothing had happened!

I then had to find my way back up to my client and my car. I walked about a mile around the edge of the lake with my bum hanging out, then hiked up the least steep section of the hill, on all fours, my shoes dangling by their straps in my mouth, and legs that were frighteningly lime colored. I was met by the texan and his stetson who could barely stand up straight so forceful was his mirth.

I think he bought the land just so he could tell the story!

Boys and girls...

A very, very silly boy said something to me yesterday that really irked me..."Stay-at-home Mums do not work for a living" Well, he obviously has never been a stay at home Mum!

A friend of mine offered a solution to this long held myth; what if all stay at home Mums just get up in the morning and rotate one house over? Would they then be "working for a living" as they are doing the job of some other mother? We could go as far as paying the mother that is looking after our kids exactly what the mother whose kids we're watching pays us and then all of society will finally sit back and say that being a Mum merits the "working for a living" label.

There...got that off my chest!

I also learned yesterday that boys and girls are all recognized as XX chromosomes until the foetus is eight weeks old. At eight weeks boys obtain the Y chromosome and drop the double X becoming XY. At this time boy's brains are bathed in testosterone and the bridge that attaches the right side of the brain to the left side of the brain is very near destroyed. This bridge is called the corpus callosum and transfers information back and forth from either side of the brain.

This transfer of information is what provokes emotions and communicability in the brain. Of course, some boys brains are bathed more than others. Once outside the womb between 6 months and 30 months girls brains are bathed in estrogen reinforcing the strength of the emotional bridge. Then it happens all over again in the teenage years.

There! Solved it!

The reason why some boys with testosterone drowned brains say really stupid things to girls like "stay-at-home Mums don't work for a living" is that one side of their brain is not talking to the other!

I wonder if that's also why boys need to be told everything in a step-by-step method...

If I used to tell my son (when he was a wee one) to take a shower and get in to his pyjamas, without remembering to add in that he needed to dry himself, he would squeeze his soaking wet body into his PJs and look at me with a look of bewilderment when I pulled out a handful of my hair.

Testosterone has an awful lot to answer for!

Eye of the Tiger

Following my run in with a bicycle rack, many of my friends and blog followers have asked about other accidental situations I've found myself in in the past, so I thought I'd share a few of them here.

Twelve years ago, just twelve short weeks after giving birth to baby number two, Tweedle dumb and I took a contract in Aruba, which is in the Dutch Caribbean. We, of course, took both kids with us. The contract was challenging as we were putting together a new show in a theatre that was barely finished on an island with few resources. To add to the complicated situation there was a very difficult star in the show; a white tiger, who ran by the name Adonis.

Having a tiger in the show was a big draw for the Hotel/Casino that owned the theatre in which we were performing and Adonis was built his very own habitat in the Hotel grounds. We were given good procedure advice on what to do if Adonis escaped his (Aruban built) cage, but the Tiger trainer seemed pretty sure that if he got out he'd kill us so denounced procedure as somewhat silly.

As lead dancer in the show, I was given the honor (ha ha) of dancing atop King Adonis's cage in a feather headdress...Tigers tend to like chickens so Adonis loved having live bait on top of his cage. Needless to say I was quite emotional having given birth just twelve weeks earlier so a good dose of fear was exactly what the doctor ordered...not!

Anyway, I was also Company Manager on this contract and one of my duties was to help the Tiger trainer transport Adonis in to the theatre. I would watch while he loaded the poor tiger in to a crate which then was attached to the back of a Jeep. My job was to check that Adonis did not poop in the cage, because if he sat in the poop we had to go back and wash it off. I would sit with my eyes glued to the tiger and shout "poop" at the top of my lungs whenever he let one go. The trainer would then jump out and scrape away said poop before Adonis could sit in it. Once we got to the theatre Adonis was transferred to his "stage" cage and I would go upstairs to get ready for the show.

On one occasion we loaded Adonis in to his cage, I went upstairs and the trainer went to wash his hands. I heard some rattling downstairs, then a thud so I looked over the stairwell....straight in to the eyes of a tiger.

Adonis flew up the stairs and I grabbed....a suitcase????...to hide behind. There really wasn't much else in the dressing room anyway. I stared Adonis directly in the eyes for ten whole minutes while he stalked me pacing around and around. Eventually he lost interest and wandered back downstairs in to the auditorium, which opened up on to a shopping mall, filled with hundreds of unsuspecting tourists! Aaaarrrggghhh!

Thankfully the trainer walked through the door just as Adonis was about to exit and tethered him in his cage.

I beat the trainer up...yes, literally. He reckoned that it was my poop watching duties that saved my life...saved by the poop?

Thanks again guardian angel!