Christina showed up at the dance studio for picture day but walked out as soon as she walked in, asking to go home. We missed her scheduled picture day because we were out of town for cheer, and when we got there today, she was surrounded by little girls in matching tutus and she felt completely out of place. So we came home and did the shoot ourselves. It was her idea to shoot in her room, which just seemed kind of perfect. It’s the epitome of her. I had fun doing this with her, and I’m kind of glad we decided to come home.
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May 4
Robin hung up her cheerleading bows today and finished the season standing tall. The team hit zero this morning, but it wasn’t enough to dig them out of last place. I’m proud of the maturity she demonstrated amidst a very small segment of highly immature teammates that unfortunately ruined the season and possibly the sport for her. I don’t know what happens next other than a good night’s sleep and going out for ice cream on Tuesday. That might be enough for now.
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May 3
Today’s competition did not go much better than yesterday’s. The coach was nicer to the team after their crappy performance, but what she didn’t say, the kids did, and they all took it out on Robin. I wish I knew why it makes some people feel good to make someone else feel bad. It takes all the joy out of a sport that is genuinely cool. We have to compete again tomorrow, but this weekend has been like a giant emotional vacuum. I’m not sure what Robin will have left. I’m not certain anyone still cares.
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May 2
Today’s Summit competition was one of those days that I think everyone probably wants back. The team did horrendous. Hands down the worst performance of the season, not just at competitions, but in practices too. To add insult to injury, the coach tore the team to shreds afterwards, throwing out hurtful insults and f-bombs, taking out all her frustrations on them. It was a day to forget and yet Robin is still going to bed with a smile on her face. For this I am so proud of her.
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April 30
Robin had her Cobalt sendoff for Summit tonight. Expectations for this team are so low that when they hit their routine, everyone was over the moon excited. Robin even came home saying it made her want to do cheer again. We left excited for this weekend, and I’m glad.
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April 29
Tonight was my last NAMI class. I’m always glad I have the opportunity to do this. It’s incredibly fulfilling for me. But Tuesdays are my only free night and I have missed having that night off these last two months. After this weekend, in fact, cheer will also be done. I’m going to have so much free time that I’ll be completely lost. Then I’ll just have to keep working on this table runner or find yet another project to keep me busy.
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April 28
One of my new roses is blooming. The blossom doesn’t look as healthy as I was hoping it’d be, but maybe it just needs to establish itself a bit more first. The garden on the whole is doing pretty well. The plants are starting to fill in a little, and it looks more flush. Even the desert rose, which I thought for sure was a goner after last winter, is growing new leaves. I’m enjoying the garden this year.
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April 27
Today was a busy day. I woke up before dawn to run the Strides for Pride run for JASMYN. It was probably my best race yet, not for finishing time, but for how I felt while I was running. It went over a bridge, twice, which is brutal. I didn’t even attempt to run the uphills. But I ran all the rest of it (minus about 1-2 minutes when I stopped to walk just because that is my expectation now). I think the downhills on the bridges made the rest feel easier, but I felt so good when I was done. I’m proud of myself. And then Christina had day two of her dance competition. There weren’t any other teams in their level or division, so they won regional champions by default. It’s hard to say how they really did without a clear benchmark, but I do know that they looked a lot better today than they did at the last competition. Christina left happy and excited, and that made me feel happy and excited. I’m so glad she has this thing that she loves this much. Everyone needs that. Robin, on the other hand, had two two-hour cheer practices today, which was just a little much for her. As much as she loves cheer, she is doing a little too much of it right now. I can see the exhaustion in her body. We’re just limping to the finish line, which is next weekend with not one, but two postseason cheer competitions. Luckily they are within 25 minutes of each other, and there’s a chance she won’t have to compete in both competitions on the same day if her level 3 team doesn’t progress to the finals on Sunday. It’s not looking like a sure thing either way right now. I guess we’ll see. No matter what, on Sunday she’ll finally be DONE. And THEN what? Mama is restless already.
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April 26
Christina had another great day of competition today. “Let It Be” won first in the category, second in the level 1 small group category, and was one of only three teams in all of level 1 that received a nomination to go to the world championships in NYC in July. She was so excited, as well she should be! I’m so proud of her.
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April 25
We gave this self publishing kit to Christina for her 10th birthday. She loved the idea of it so much that she was afraid to use it in case she messed it up. She wrote a bunch of stories, but none of them seemed good enough to publish. In the end, she decided to use a series of stories she wrote a few years earlier: The Collections of My Friend Zombia. She literally spent more than a year transcribing the stories onto the provided pages and then illustrating them. She finally finished it about a month ago, long after I’d given up hope that it’d ever be finished. Somehow she’d managed to hold on to all the paperwork that went along with the kit and we managed to get it sent off. It arrived today and it is really the work of a true artist. I say that as the artist’s mother, knowing full well that I am biased, but I love it. It’s a story about a girl and her zombie friend, and another friend who can’t handle the idea of being friends with a zombie, so she blows herself up at the mall in front of both of them. And they live happily ever after. Well, some of them do.
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April 24
I clocked 55 miles on the odometer today, just going back and forth between dance and tumbling. I did this after a full day of work, and then I came home and had dinner and had a Zoom meeting with my NAMI co-facilitator, took a shower, and somehow still felt like I could run around the block at least three times. I don’t know where the energy is coming from, but I hope it never stops.
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April 23
Spent a few minutes in the garden after work. One of the new roses has a bud on it. The impatiens was angry that I hadn’t watered it in a few days. This amaryllis is a late bloomer, but beautiful as can be. The weather was perfect and I was jealous of our neighbor, who was grilling hamburgers that smelled amazing. These are the nights to eat on the patio and we are spending them at dance and cheer and work and eating pizza out of a box. It could be worse, and a few minutes in the garden on a beautiful evening is better than nothing at all.
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April 22
I started running again last fall. I thought that, like other times I have gotten into running, progress would come easily over time. These last four months or so have proved me very, very wrong. I thought that by now, completing a 5k would feel relatively easy, or at least POSSIBLE. I have a race coming up this weekend and I learned that the course goes over a bridge, twice. The thought of running uphill – twice – AND completing a 5k at the same time makes me want to cry. At my last 5k, running in spurts of three minutes at a time on flat ground felt like I was roasting on a slow spit of eternal damnation. ETERNAL. But I keep trying. I reset back a bit on my Couch to 5k program and today was my first long run in several weeks – the goal was 22 minutes. I finished 20. How could I not finish those last two minutes?? But also, how did I manage to run for a full 20 minutes without stopping?? It feels miraculous. It’s not the first time I’ve managed 20 minutes in the last couple of months, but it’s the first time I’ve done it since I started regularly giving in to the mental fatigue before I even got on the treadmill. Today I am Leonardo DiCaprio at the bow of the Titanic shouting, “I’M THE KING OF THE WORLD!” And yes, I know the Titanic sank and he drowned, but goddamn it, he was happy as hell in that moment with Kate Winslet in his arms. And even if I go down with the ship tomorrow, I fucking won today. Yes sir, yes, I did.
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April 21
I didn’t stick around for cheer tonight and instead came home to cook dinner, even though no one else was home. I got a whole 90 minutes all to myself. It was blissfully quiet. I need to do this more often.
Year in Photos 