Rah Rah Rah
We're going to just conveniently ignore the part where there is an actual 16-year old living in my house and the fact that I have to take her for her driving test tomorrow because ARGH TIME IS STUPID. Instead, let's focus on the past! Yay!
It's been an entire week since the girls had a cheer competition.
Yeah, we still do that thing. It's not because I love dragging them both to practices and such. It's because they love doing it. Remember that, girls, when you're picking out my retirement home. Every practice and competition and blurgh.
It's fine.
Everything is fine.
Mostly it's a giant ball of concern because there's still this whole COVID thing and general opinions of how we should navigate it vary GREATLY across the teams. I'm not saying I have the right answers. None of us do. But I suspect that maybe doing nothing puts everyone you encounter at higher risk. That's a thing that happens with a few of the families involved with the whole thing. Alas.
There's your slightly-longer-than-necessary explanation for why my kids are in the minority wearing masks during their competition performance. They were both annoyed at the number of adults who refused to wear masks while watching, despite the signs everywhere mandating them and the very long emails we received telling us we were supposed to. The girls were allowed to take them off while performing, but were like, "Yeah, no. There are too many stupid people here."
So they're becoming lovers of humanity. Ahem.
First up was Alexis, who walked away with a state championship and a bid to nationals. So, woooo! More cheer! (Ugh.) She did well, of course, but the really fun part of their performance is that Alexis isn't the best tumbler any more. It might be weird that I seemingly think that's great, but it IS great. The program has grown to the point that it attracts a lot more kids and some of them have caught up to her and then flipped right past her. Alexis focuses more on acro than on tumbling, so it makes sense, but also it's GOOD because she never liked being the one doing the majority of the tumbling. There's less pressure now.
And then came Mila. Mila does this thing where she acts like she's completely incompetent in all ways when she's around Alexis and me. She then proceeds to be VERY competent around literally every other person on earth. She put that skill on display by being really very good at her routine. I half expected her to just hang with her team, but then she actually knew the routine well and was better than just hanging.
Lest you think I'm being harsh here, I'm being way nicer than Alexis was. The routine opens with a dance sequence. Mila -nailed- it. Seriously, she did great. Alexis, out of pure shock, loudly declared, "Holy s**t! She isn't terrible!" I can prove that's a direct quote because it was caught on video (though Alexis said I'm not allowed to post it because she maintains that she doesn't swear but I can prove she does mwahahahahaha!). So, uh, Mila, we do believe in you, we just didn't realize you had actually been paying attention. Mostly we thought that because YOU LITERALLY SAID YOU DIDN'T KNOW YOUR ROUTINE THAT VERY MORNING, YOU TINY FIBBER.
She's the itty bitty flyer at the top of that pile of chaos, by the way. Because of course the kid who swears she doesn't pay attention would be a flyer. Of course.
Mila's team hit zero (no deductions) but wound up in 2nd place. Wanna guess how mad that made Mila? Because you have not seen how much anger can fit in that tiny body, but I can tell you it's A LOT. Mila was FURIOUS. The words, "I came here to win a championship," came out of her mouth. She ranted about it all day long, trying her best to find someone to blame even as Alexis and I were like, "Get over it." She had a long lecture she wanted to give the judges about how hard their routine was and how they maybe shouldn't let the other team cheat (they didn't) and basically she needed a scapegoat but I wouldn't supply one.
She got over it eventually. Mostly.
Because her team also won a bid to nationals.
Her nationals are in a different city and at a different time than Alexis'.
So I get to do -two- cheer nationals in 2022.
We're going to need to consider a luxury retirement home for me, girls. I will have earned it.
Friday, January 28, 2022
