MegaMAID's Parenting Parables

Life moves fast! Taking time to write (or read) about it sometimes helps keep things in perspective. Below you'll find a few thoughts from Meg, a MAID in Maryland...

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Location: Maryland, United States

“Mother Addicted to Irish Dance” (MAID) is a title that I first began to earn in the summer of 2003. Watching my daughter express the music of my ancestry through this beautiful art form stirred in me a joy that was … all-consuming! It led to an “addiction” that I continue to feed as a parent, as a writer, as an adult dancer, and as an enthusiastic Craic participant.

May 04, 2007

Playing Hooky

I’m late publishing the May newsletter, my house has tumbleweeds of dog hair spinning across the kitchen floor, and my youngest daughter is still wearing her pajamas at lunchtime.

But it’s a beautiful spring day, I’ve just finished mowing the lawn, and my allergies are exploding, causing far too much congestion to be able to actually work on anything that I should be doing right now…

So instead, here I sit playing with the scraps of a few ideas for the blog... Ah, the life of a freelance contractor... I love it!

Blogger.com has this new cool reference tag system. (It’s not so new really. I’ve just been too busy to learn how it works yet. So I feel less self-inflicted guilt if I refer to it as “new”.) The system allows a writer to tag a post with keywords that link to other similar posts. Great system! If I had made a New Year’s Resolution of cool new things to learn, this would be on the list. (There you go – I also could have linked something in that sentence to my post mentioning that I refused to make a New Year’s Resolution. But, seeing as I haven’t, you’ll just have to dig into the January archives if you feel so inspired, until I muster the energy to learn the tag system…)

So, on to Irish dance related thoughts…

With the Spring Performances behind us, the current focus is competitions. As I mentioned earlier, Katie will be dancing at the North American Championships this July in Ottawa. (Note to self: insert link to “O, What an Experience”. Eventually. No pressure. It’s only May, the fifth month of the year, and you never actually made a New Year’s Resolution. So it doesn’t count. Right?)

Sorry… where was I? Oh yes, competition stuff…

Since my allergy-enhanced scatterbrained thoughts are wandering, let’s jump back in time to the end of March… (Hey, who says these posts have to be in chronological order? It’s my blog!)

March 31, we traveled to the West Virginia Feis for Katie’s first competition in 2007. Even though she danced very well at the Regional Championships, her TCRG would still like her to get firsts in all of her Prizewinner level dances before moving up to Preliminary Champion level. She needs only one more, so Katie will continue to dance Prizewinner level until she can get that final first in Slip Jig.

Nope, didn’t happen in West Virginia. In fact, Katie placed third in traditional set, but didn’t even make the boards in any of her other dances. Which led to some interesting discussions about motivation…

(Ugh, this post is torturing me!!! MUST learn tag system, and link back to “Is It About Winning?”…)

I’m embarrassed to admit it, but yes, I did say, “Tell me again why we’re traveling to Canada this summer???” Katie’s dances looked a bit flat. No noticeable mistakes, still a beautiful smile on her face, just… flat. Not enough energy, nor enough height in her leaps. Not championship level dancing.

Did I mention that this feis was March 31? Granted, she had just completed an extremely busy performance season. Maybe she hadn’t kicked in to “competition mode” yet?

Dancing at these high levels of competition requires a significant commitment to practice. For a nine-year-old third grader, that also requires significant support from parents and dance teachers to help plan and structure that practice time. Katie has started keeping a practice log, which she shows to her teacher every two weeks. On days that she doesn’t have class, she is asked to practice something that needs work for at least 20 minutes. She also logs the reason that she misses practice (sick, forgot, etc.), then discusses strategies for improvement with her teacher.

So, the plan is in place, the commitment is there, and you’re assuming that we’re heading to Canada because my champion dancer is going to “bring home the gold”, right!

Uh… no. Yes, I expect significant effort from Katie in preparation to do her best at this competition. And, yes, I trust her TCRG’s decision to allow Katie to go. Beyond that, I have no expectations related to her results. Period.

Here’s what I do expect: FUN! And the West Virginia Feis was a good reminder...

Driving to West Virginia was a hoot. We connected by cell phone with Molly, who was headed to the feis with her dancer and 6-month-old son, and stopped together at a Cracker Barrel for dinner. It made for a later arrival than intended, but started the fun of vacationing early.

After dinner, having passed through several zigzagging interstates in Pittsburgh, we abruptly landed on the back roads of West Virginia. In the dark. Forty-five minutes of small curvy roads had us wondering exactly where in the world this feis was being held… and whether or not the hotel would actually have running water. But, lo and behold, a very nice Holiday Inn Express magically appeared on the horizon, complete with indoor pool!

Quite unfortunately, the winding roads had taken their toll on Molly’s daughter, who threw up all over the minivan. So while Molly heroically cleaned out the car, the kids enjoyed the hotel and I held baby Liam while reconnecting with my friends Jasmine, Brooke and Heather. With a tendency to hide behind her camera (much like her friend ZandB), Jasmine snapped this photo…

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Don’t worry, Molly. I’m sure that the beer was much less detrimental to Liam’s growth and development than the chlorine fumes we were all inhaling…

Yes, there’s nothing quite like a hotel swimming pool to brighten a dancer’s weekend!

And there’s nothing quite like a good meal to brighten a dancer’s parents’ weekend…

Saturday night our friends had gone home, so we ventured out to dinner on our own. After asking the hotel manager for a recommendation, he sent us across the bridge to Ohio (less than two minutes away) and down a back alley near the train tracks. Never in a million years would someone find this restaurant by accident, but my oh my was it ever worth investigating! Casa D’Emilio’s has a welcoming, casual atmosphere, excellent food at very low prices, a nice selection of wine, and (drum roll please…) Guinness on tap! Yep, great way to end a feis day...

Sunday, we drove home a different route, following the Ohio River south toward Wheeling and then picking up I-70 East back toward Baltimore. The scenery was breathtaking, and we had a glimpse of a part of America with interesting “living history”. We saw more vibrant, thriving Main Streets in the handful of small towns we drove through than I thought existed anywhere in the States. We also passed right through the middle of a huge steel plant... which made me feel like an extra on the set of Flashdance. (No, ZandB, we didn’t see Jennifer Beals.)

All in all, a wonderful family vacation.

Which is what our trip to Canada will be this summer, too!

Balancing responsibilities and rewards, we’ll continue to travel this fascinating path of competitive Irish dance, loving every minute of it…

But if we’re going to be able to eat dinner at fun restaurants in Ottawa, I had better stop playing hooky and get back to work…

Second note to self: Next time you “play hooky”, teach yourself how to do blog tags…

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2 Comments:

Blogger Bunny said...

Oh, Meg, blog tags are so easy! I resisted them at first, too, not knowing where to start. I just started tagging my current post however I thought sounded good, then eventually I would write another post that shared a tag. It has worked really well. And, don't worry I've been blogging since...um...fall 2005? (I think) and I have only recently added a Flickr badge and various other things. Slow but sure.

8:19 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Technorati also has a tagging system. As if you needed more:) And, hey, Liam likes a good Irish tune, so he's inhaling some beer fumes, too? j/k

I'm terribly behind in my "slushpile" of dance-related blogging entries. Ah, well.

4:24 PM  

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