Pickled Ballerina's Feet

With my current job search bullying my dance craze to the backseat of the bus, attending ballet class has taken a nosedive.  Tuesdays and Thursdays are my buckle-down-and-just-do-it days to work on applications for the entire "business day".  Mondays and Wednesdays are spent doing my other full-time occupation of being a housewife.  Believe me, if there were any way possible, I'd keep my current job.  But it doesn't pay enough for college tuition.  In fact, monetarily speaking, it doesn't pay at all.  Except in the love and affection of my family.

That leaves Fridays to relax into a physically exhaustive exercise routine.  My only ballet class of the week these days. 

My ballet teacher is a wonderful woman.  She danced professionally from age 16 onward.  She was a Rockette at one time and danced in Sweden for a while.  Now she teaches ballet to pre-schoolers through pre-pointe.  Plus her adult class, her gal pals.

She's somewhat eccentric in certain ways.  She refuses to see Western doctors until she can barely walk.  She drinks Listerine before class every day.  And recently she's taken to drinking water mixed with cider vinegar. 

She's also gotten on the green bandwagon by buying a metal water bottle to carry her vinegar water.  Apparently, she just bought it.  At my last class I walked in and found her swearing about how her bottle had leaked all in her bag.  Both pairs of ballet slippers were soaked.

But she had nothing else to wear and, with her gnarled feet from years of pointe shoes, she won't dance barefooted or sock footed.  She just squished her way through class, leaving puddles where she stood too long while mentally choreographing each piece. 

The good thing about ballet slippers is that, even after all the blood, sweat, and tears, they still smell like leather.  Rule Number One in ballet is never to wear your ballet shoes anywhere but in the studio.  So they're not on our feet for more than a couple of hours at a time.

Still.  One has to wonder how the vinegar will affect the suppleness of the leather and thereby a dancer's ability to arch her foot.  Inquiring ballerina minds (me) want to know.