Look at Her

• “Oh my God, she’s wearing a dress over pants!”

• “Is that a zebra skirt on her?

• “High heels? Happy birthday, I guess…”

No, I didn’t mistake a dress for a shirt, I don’t usually kill animals and no, it’s not my goddamn birthday! It’s just a way to stand out and express myself. You see, being different and belonging to a certain stream is not the same. I do break dance, and at certain occasions I dress in baggy street clothes. But it doesn’t mean I live a street life. It doesn’t mean I talk like street people. It doesn’t mean I always dress like a b-dancer. You see, people that belong to a certain stream have obligations to fulfill. These obligations include dressing, talking, behaving etc. It’s not bad. But this can not be called style. It’s just following certain guidelines.

Style is something you create without inventing a bike. Creating a new shirt with four sleeves is probably fun, but you shouldn’t bother about it everyday. Designers don’t. They care about the pattern, fabric, way of wearing clothes…. Open the drawer and combine two seemingly uncombinable things. It may and may not work out. But it is definitely your style. That’s it.

Me and Food

I’ve discovered a great dish called Fondue. I tried it with my friends, and strongly advise everyone to have it at least once. It is a tradition as strong as the Japanese tea drinking etiquette. Anyways, you sit around a bowl with chocolate that needs to be constantly warming up. What you do is dip pieces of fruits, cookies or marshmallows into it. Not only it tastes good. It’s a great way to get together, chat and enjoy.

Well, I guess that now I will start looking for this bowl. It has to be made of porcelain, with a small candle inside. This candle warms up the whole thing. Considering a fact that I’m addicted to all kinds of sweets, this will be my favorite dessert for all times and seasons.

Fondue is not only chocolate. Its classic kind is warmed cheese sauce that you dip pieces of bread into. It can also be olive oil with fish and meet. Whatever it is, it is usually served in a center of a table to gather people. Truly a great thing.

How to Add Romance into Relationships

My boyfriend, Max, is a 100% b-boy. He wears sneakers, T-shirts, baggy jeans and bandanas. That’s what I like about him. He’s just like me – mobile and funky. I never saw him in tuxedo just like he never saw me wearing high heels. This is why the experience was great.

The thing is that my best friend invited me to try dancing salsa in a club where she has been dancing for a long time. I’m into adventures, so I decided to accept the invitation. Salsa is a pair dance, and surprisingly Max didn’t mind (which is weird because usually he doesn’t take anything but break dance seriously).

We agreed to meet in a salsa dancing room, but it took me quite some time to find Max even though the room was not crowded. Wearing ironed pants, a shirt and a pair of shining shoes, he looked more like Leo Di Caprio in Titanic, than a boy dancing on the street. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. And all that evening I felt myself Cinderella dancing with the Prince. Unforgettable feeling.

How I Was a Saloon Girl

The best thing about Truckee, NV, is this feeling that all of a sudden a miracle took you back, into the time of cowboys and Indians. Neat wooden houses, wooden pavements and stores with a wide variety of hats – with flowers, feathers, you name it – just pump up the mood right away.

The very atmosphere there is absolutely special. It feels like the world itself is somewhere far behind, and you witness some historical events. The impression would’ve been complete, if not for the big flat TV screen hanging in a cafй where I had lunch.

The mentality prompted I have to get the special moments canned, so I went to a photo studio. They have special places in Truckee, where you can get dressed up in an outfit and have a black-and white or sepia photo taken. I chose to be a saloon girl. But the problem popped up. A size of my bra was not enough to fit perfectly into a lacey white corset. Mom and sister proposed to stuff it with something. Giggling, they brought me a pack of tissues.

Not a bad idea, as it turned out. The picture looks seductive:-)

Me and Pets

There are only few things that can guide my Mom into chaos: problems at work, with my kid sister, and my boundless love to animals. The last is truly fatal to her because she doesn’t feel connected to animals anyhow. On the other hand, I can’t walk past a lonely, hungry, lost creature without taking him/her home.

Cats are my biggest love. One of them was not able to feed her baby kittens, so I had to do it instead. I’ll never forget those tiny things trying to hide in my palm while I was giving them milk in a special bottle. And it felt especially good seeing them grow up into cute cats.

Dad, in his turn, loves dogs. Periodically our house becomes a shelter for lost or homeless puppies. This makes my Mom absolutely crazy. Once she even asked us to bring home fishes for a change because they are silent and need minimal space. She was joking. We were serious.

A month after this a big aquarium with fishes appeared in our house. Well, I greet them without enthusiasm, but don’t mind, either. We all called them Mom’s fishes. She didn’t say a word against… until it became obvious to her that these creatures need even more attention and devotion, than little fuzzy friends. Not only they had to be fed, but the aquarium had to be cleaned up every week. For this, fishes had to be taken out as well as all the shells and other stuff, poured water had to be special and clean, and…. Do I need to say that in a few weeks fishes moved to the house of our best friends where they still live and enjoy their life?

Another story happened with parrots. Two cute birds – a blue and a yellow one – became the members of our family as soon as I said that I want to take care of baby parrots. I waited for them for about half a year. Then a friend of ours came. When I told him about my plans, he took a close look at the birds and laughed. He told me I had two male parrots, and there was no way for them to have descendants.

After this I decided to stick to cats and dogs.