A cold, snowy Saturday night. Dinnertime. Decision time. Did we want to settle in for the evening with our respective murder mysteries or go to the dance?
Dancing won—just barely. After we finished eating and did the dishes, we had 45 minutes before leaving the house at the agreed-upon time of 7:25. We went off in our separate ways to get ready.
His preparation (phase one):
1. Sit down in the recliner with his book.
My preparation:
1. Meditate for some moments in front of the open closet door to decide what to wear. Choose a denim skirt, purple tee shirt, and black corduroy jacket.
2. Heat iron and press shirt.
3. Take off jeans and sweater, put on pantyhose, skirt, tee shirt, and jacket.
4. Decide purple shirt is too dark. Select pink lacy tee shirt instead. Take off freshly-ironed purple shirt and toss it onto the bed. Put on pink shirt. Put jacket back on.
5. Decide texture of corduroy jacket clashes with texture of lacy shirt. Take off corduroy jacket and toss it onto the bed. Put on black blazer instead.
6. Select necklace and put it on. It's too long for neckline of pink shirt. Replace it with a different one. It's too large and doesn't look right against lacy shirt. Replace it with third necklace. Like Baby Bear's chair, it's just right. Add matching earrings.
7. Get out curling iron and turn it on to heat.
8. Touch up eyeliner and apply eye shadow and mascara.
9. Curl hair.
10. Put on dancing shoes and buckle them.
11. Check mirror. Pass self-inspection. Check clock. It's 7:23.
12. Put on coat, get purse.
Total time to prepare to leave the house: 44 minutes.
Meanwhile, back at the recliner, he has been contentedly reading for 43½ minutes. He moves on to phase two of his preparation:
1. Put bookmark in book, set book aside.
2. Get up from chair.
3. Put on coat.
Total time to prepare to leave the house (not counting reading several chapters): one minute and a half.
LeRoy Olesen, a long-time local dance instructor who is personally responsible for helping hundreds of couples master the foxtrot and the waltz, frequently reminds the men in his classes: "Your job is to make the lady look good."
It's only fair for the gentleman to have that responsibility when the couple is out on the floor. The lady, after all, puts in all her effort toward looking good before they leave the house.
Practical Prairie Woman 
Yep, it takes a while for my Ginny to get all gussied up for the dances.But about that eating: Ginny makes sure we never eat anything that would give us a potent breath. She says she doesn’t want to smell like those who have a pizza before going to dance. We have missed a lot of dances this winter due to Ginny’s knee operation but are eager to begin again. Thanks for the intertaining blog.