Learning to shake the money maker!

Well.

Last night, I had quite the experience. My beloved sister-in-law Jenn is getting married in a couple of weeks (yay!) and as matron-of-honor, I had the pleasure of attending her stagette last night with many of her bridesmaids. It was a rollicking evening in Toronto, let me tell you.

We began the festivities with a Coyote Ugly dance class at Flirty Girl Fitness. And I will admit, I was leery...not of the fun to be had, but of my abilities. I was fairly certain I'd make a total Coyote Ugly failure, and that I'd be laughed into Coyote Ugly jail. You know the place: it's inhabited by all sorts of lumpy and uncoordinated gals like myself. The idea of dancing on a bar top was pretty much the scariest thing I could envision for my round-ass self.

Our teacher was a svelte, young thing who could give the devil a coronary with her seductive moves. She started us off with a model walk, and we paraded up and down an imaginary catwalk. Then we had to do 4 flirty poses, you know, to illustrate exactly how feminine and sexy we were. Ha!

Bridesmaid Tania, whose sense of humor is a lot like mine, decided she preferred to do silly poses. Think John Cleese in the Ministry of Silly Walks skit, only with a beautiful woman with flowing red hair. She had me howling in the aisles as she pointed at her boobs, and stuck out her butt.

As for me, my hips haven't hurt like that in a while, not since I took bellydancing classes years ago. You never expect your hips to hurt, but I assure you, with the right exercise, they most definitely can.

I expected the go through the entire experience blushing like a vestal virgin. However, as we got into the groove, dancing to "Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy," I crawled out of my shell. It turned out to be really fun. And we graduated from the class by dancing on the bar. I'm just so glad I didn't fall off it. I asked the clerk if anyone ever had. Yup. They sure have. Thank God I wasn't one of them.

I did blush a lot, but I'm so glad I did it. Not just because I got to spend time with some very groovy ladies, but because it took me out of my comfort zone. We all need to get out of that zone every so often, and if you're going to do it, you might as well do it by pretending to ride a cowboy on top of a bar for all to see.

Go big, or go home.