Complete the following simile:

Stacy Bertinelli and balletic grace go together like …

a) Turds and punch bowls

b) Rama lama lama ke ding a de dinga a dong

c) Sarah Palin and Rachel Maddow

d) A and C but not B

e) A and B but not C

f) All of the above

So when my Team Limoncello partner-in-crime Kellee Stooks suggested we take a Ballet Barre™ exercise class to test our physical fitness and steely resolve… well, stop me if you’ve heard this before.

Ballet Barre™  promises a tough, calorie-blasting workout that lengthens your legs, strengthens your arms and lifts your butt. As I rapidly approach 40, I’m all about lifting my butt, as long as my dignity remains intact.

I can assure you that at Ballet Barre™, it did not.

First, let’s start with the fact that I didn’t even know how to pronounce what we were doing: Ballet Barre™.

Bar? Bare? Bar-ay? Bare-ay? Originally I thought she wanted to go drinking at a Nutcracker-themed tavern. Little did I know, Kellee wanted to subject me to humiliation and scorn, costing me $23 in the process. For the record, $23 can usually buy two drinks and an appetizer during happy hour – instead, it paid for one of the unhappiest hours of my life.

Because I’m a gamer – or perhaps because I was already fatigued from the 5-mile run I’d done the night before and the hour of physical therapy I’d done on my shoulder that morning, I bellied up to Ballet Barre™… where I found a thigh-high bar circumnavigating three mirrored walls. Among the many reasons I prefer to exercise outdoors, an absence of mirrors is in the Top 3. While hurling my body through space and time, I don’t really want to be reminded of my lack of coordination. It’s bad enough that I don’t know left from right, add a mirror into the equation and someone will likely get kicked in the head.

Oh sure, I took the obligatory ballet lessons as a grade schooler. I do not recall my actual feelings about those lessons because I had wiped the experience from my memory. In the Feducia family tree, my sister Kelly inherited every dance gene our folks had to offer. Tap. Jazz. Swing. She could do it all – and she did it so well, she was asked to teach classes at her studio. She moves with fluid grace through space and time, even when she’s not dancing – and at 37, she can still do a standing split (a skill her husband keenly appreciates – she’s bendy).

I have never been able to do a standing split. I can’t even do a seated split, though I have been known to split my pants.

At Ballet Barre™, our instructor asked us to do a standing split to work on our balance and lengthen our thigh-muscles. Clad in my split-resistant Spandex running tights, I attempted my version of the standing splits, which most yoga folks would call Warrior C and what I like to call, “downward-facing dumbass.” Our instructor then led the class through an elegantly choreographed spin so we could switch legs, facing the other direction. I managed to execute the move without injuring a classmate or myself. Basking in the aftermath of my achievement, while examining my cracked toenail polish and thinking I’d rather be having my toenails surgically removed than finishing this adventure in Ballet Barre™, I suddenly realized, hey, I’m looking at the same toes I just saw a second ago.

That would be your other left leg, dumbass.

This encapsulates the reason I stayed on the bottom of the pyramids as a 6th-grade cheerleader, and why I never bothered to go out for cheerleader in high school, even though I was voted Most School Spirit by my senior class. In certain instances, I can sublimate all aspects of my personality (willfulness, leadership, bull-in-china-shoppedness) and follow a good lead through swing turns or Texas two-steps on a dance floor… but typically the exertion leaves me spent and quivering and in need of a stiff drink (see happy hour).

Sadly, I had not been drinking heavily before I arrived (see unhappiest hour), so I was sincere and attentive when our instructor explained that we would be doing refined, precise movements – no more than an inch at a time. I should have left the studio as soon as those words left her lips.

Let’s tackle another multiple choice question, shall we?

These words would never be used together to describe Stacy Bertinelli:

a) Refined and precise

b) Athletic and graceful

c) Uncoordinated but undaunted

d) Determined but floppy

e) A and B, but not C and D

f) All of the above.

OK, let’s just review that last point: The key to lifting your butt (and shredding your dignity) is making microscopic movements while contracting all of your muscles. Yeah. I have a hard enough telling left from right, but trying to decide exactly what that movement is when the instructor is only moving a half-inch at a time is a challenge. Half the time, I had no idea what she was up to, even though she explained it well enough that Kellee had no problem grasping it, nor did anyone else. Then she asked us to place our legs on the Barre™. While my classmates lifted their legs to the bar in a graceful swoop, I had to use both hands to physically lift my leg onto the Barre™… to stretch, not to exercise, just to stretch. I used both hands.

My dog Coolidge lifts his leg more elegantly, and frankly, if I could have summoned an incontinence issue that would have gotten me kicked out of the class, I would have.

Suffice it to say, this was the first activity I’ve ever undertaken that I just balls-out wanted to quit only 15 minutes into the game. Had it not been for Kellee, my training partner and champion egger-on, I would have rolled up my mat and waltzed out the door (though I probably would have tripped somewhere en route). Like broccoli or brussels sprouts, I pride myself on at least trying and somehow managing to finish whatever athletic endeavor I’ve attempted. Unless I’m missing a limb, quitting is not an option.

That said, the jury is still out on whether opting out is an option. I could not recall if the sugar-plum fairies had ever rocked a side plank in the dance of the snowflakes, so I took a pass on that one (see shoulder rehab). I also gave up when she wanted us seated below the bar while stretching our legs up above the bar. I can’t even begin to explain (let alone execute) the move she wanted us to do, except to say that it looked like a reverse jack-knife that you’d do off a diving board if you were 40 pounds lighter and maybe 25 years younger.

And so we will conclude this adventure in Ballet Barre™ with a final, multiple choice question:

Of all the athletic endeavors that Stacy Bertinelli has undertaken over the past year, which is she most likely to do again:

A) Develop explosive diarrhea while running long distances

B) Develop explosive diarrhea and MRSA while swimming long distances

C) Make a hot mess of hot yoga

D) Belly up to the Ballet Barre™

E) A and B but not C and D

F) All of the above.

Hint: I’m now packing Sarah Palin toilet tissue with my race gear.