45 and Dirty Dancing

If you follow my blog or read my book “She’s Losing It!” then you know that every year for my birthday I do something outside of my comfort zone to scare myself.  It’s kind of like having a bucket list, only instead of doing 100 things all at once and then dropping dead, I do one thing per year and then eat cake.

Today I turn 45; or as my friend, Regina, likes to put it, I’m halfway to 90.

One of those goals that I’ve been trying (and failing) to complete for about 32 years now was to do the final dance from the movie Dirty Dancing, you know, the one with “The Lift”.  If you’re a man, you’re probably rolling your eyes right now.  To you I say, “You have a million Rocky, Gladiator and Mission Impossible movies plus like 10,000 weak-kid-wins-the-football-game movies to choose from, so don’t take this one ugly-ducking-turns-into-a-swan-and-wins-the-bad-boy-at-the-end chick flick movie from me!  Also, thanks for reading my blog.”

I love everything about this movie from “I carried a watermelon” to “Nobody puts Baby in a corner.”  And the final dance scene at the end?  Where she conquers her fears, stands up for herself and her man and learns to leap into the sky!?!  OF COURSE I wanted to do this dance since I was 13!

My biggest problem was that my husband had exactly zero, Z-E-R-O, interest in playing the Patrick Swayze dance part, because there’s that whole deadlifting your wife over your head thing at the end, plus a dance solo.  I was going to go ahead on my own and just hire a professional dance partner, but where’s the fun in that?  I wanted to dance with my husband.

So, this year, I pulled out my secret weapon:  Guilt.

Because not only is today my 45th birthday, but this year is also our 15th wedding anniversary.  BOOM.  Yeah, I went there.

I’m proud to say, Henri agreed to make my dream into a reality and we’ve been taking ballroom dancing lessons in secret since Thanksgiving.  He wins the lottery for Badass Husband.  I can honestly say this was the coolest birthday experience he ever gave me.

Kudos to our dance teacher, Raymond White, with Lonestar Dance for teaching us everything.  He’s awesome!  He was able to break down all the steps for us and teach us the lift, which, by the way, is REALLY SCARY!  If you ever want to learn this dance or any other ballroom dancing and you live in Pflugerville/Round Rock I highly recommend him.

I’m not going to lie.  I totally fell over my own feet and twisted my ankle badly about two weeks ago, but little things like pain or logic will never stand in my way of fulfilling my teenage fantasies as part of my ongoing midlife crisis.  Due to my injury we had to push back the filming schedule and we filmed this last night so the video will be ready in about a week.  Be on the lookout!  For now, here’s a teaser photo taken by Taylor Prinsen…here’s the money shot.

Dirty Dancing with my husband

At some point, I will compile a full blopper reel, because our practice attempts were beyond funny.  For now, I’m just happy beyond bliss that we were able to pull this off without killing ourselves and had a good time doing it.  I’m also happy our children agreed to be in video.  (I can’t wait to show it to you when it’s done!)  I get the feeling that my entire family will be pulling out their own guilt trip cards next time they want to do anything…”Remember when we helped you with that Dirty Dancing thing?”

How about you?  Are you working on any Birthday Scares or bucket list items?  If not, give it a try!  Birthday to birthday, make this the best year of your life.  Then eat some cake.

Lisa 🙂

P.S. – For my next birthday scare I’m turning my book into a movie.  I have no idea how to do this.  Let the countdown begin.

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