Category Archives: Dance

Superbowl Sunday

05 Monday Feb 2018

Posted by in Dance, Football, Uncategorized

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I forgot I haven’t posted yet, so it seems irrelevant but here is Sunday’s post… Unedited too…

Happy Superbowl Day! I am at a dance convention worth the Gurl there has been the same dance studio drama for the last few years and nothing changes. I am frustrated because I said at this time last year that I would go through this again. I had meeting with teachers and studio owners only for the same dance drama to happen again with no changes, actually something’s have gotten worse. If we left the studio last year for a new one we would be settled and established at a new location right now I feel stuck my girl went from being excited about this dance weekend saying, “maybe I will come back next year”, to “this is probably my last year here.” It sucks when you pay for a service and are let down by the said service providers. I really want them to come through but lack of professionalism and disregard for what we as “customers” are paying for is disappointing to say the least. Obviously there are a lot of emotions and subjectivity involved because it involves our children, but flat out lies and disregard for structure is what is so frustrating! Anyway, I don’t want my daughter to lose her love for dance because the people who are supposed to be guiding her are more concerned with their own lives than they are with their business, this is a business trip for them (and the dancers and their families), they seem to be treating it like a vacation.

Anyway today is the happiest day of the year!!!! It is Superbowl!!! I just have to say The Patriots are so fucking good. Annoyingly good! I have always hated the Patriots! The one time I had then in the Superbowl for a win is when they fucking lost! I hate how Tom Brady got the spot from Drew Bledsoe the year Drew was injured and I have hated him ever since. However, I can’t deny how good they have been! I won’t say best of all time because I can’t! I don’t think Tom Brady is Better than Peyton Manning I don’t even want to hear the number of rings argument. How many does Dan Marino have? He is still a Hall of Fame QB but I’m a hater!

I’m going to End this with #GoHawks I am Seahawks fan to the core.

#SLWC2018

Dance Stress

04 Sunday Feb 2018

Posted by in Dance, Dance Like No One is Watching, Do You, Kids, Live in the Moment, Love, Nothing Meaningful, Parenting, Schedule

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It is mid dance convention weekend. There has been some stress, but the Girl has danced her heart out and done amazing as have her teammates! The kids are doing an amazing job! I love watching her dance! We we’re there at 7am until 10:30pm I’m spent. I had a great day and will talk about my day more as the week goes on and when I am not so exhausted!

#SLWC2018

Call Your Friends

01 Thursday Feb 2018

Posted by in Connection, Dance, Do Your Thing, Don't judge me, Family, Friends, Raising Kids, Relax, Self Care, wrestling

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Why people are sad

Happy Thursday!!! So, there has been no alcohol consumed on this First day of February but for some reason the mood in here is light and airy, unlike it has been for the last month of Dry January. It is a good day here in the Earl household! The boy is well into his first year of Middle School Wrestling and doing great. He has had 2 matches on Varsity as a 6th grader, 2 wins, 1 with a pin and one by points. Today was the points match. It was intense the kid he wrestled was good but the Boy was better. He kept focus was strong and held him off and managed to score more points even when the ref was screwed up in his scoring (he had to score a couple Take-downs before he even got points). I love watching him wrestle he is doing great!

The girl is gearing up for her first full convention and competition this weekend. She will be on her own deciding what she can do per her knee pain. She has taken today and tomorrow’s classes off to give a rest before the big weekend. I hope she can hold up with minimal set backs but sometimes when you rehab from injury and reintroduce sports and workload, that happens. This is the competition that she won their title award a few years ago. I love seeing her win awards and get scholarships but I try not to attach to much emotion to that, but it’s hard! I just love watching her dance!

Today I had a girlfriend come over for coffee. OMG was that refreshing and so enjoyable! I really needed that and I think the two of us need to do that more often! It is refreshing for the soul. Women need supportive women friends to support each other. I am so happy to have reconnected. I met this friend through my daughter. The Girl and this friends daughter have been friends since 2 grade or so. The daughter is a great friend to the Girl and the mom to me. I am just so thankful and grateful for her. We had a great visit talking about everything under the sun even gossiping about our kids and their drama with their friends. We made a “we won’t tell anyone what we talked about today” pact. I love that! I love my friend!

You need people! We all need people especially us ladies. We thrive on each other we process emotions by talking to each other and it helps us to not kill our husbands and children and for ourselves. Men need that sense of community to but they process things differently sorry guys but I don’t know how to tell you to do it, but grab a guy friend go shoot hoops or play golf, boys don’t seem to need to talk as much as ladies they need to move, work on cars together or play sports. Bottom line we all need community and friends. Ladies tend to compete with each other and get petty and find faults we need to stop that! I am thankful that this mom friend has never made me feel like we are competing, Nor has she judged me, she’s a good friend! Not to mention she has been available to take my kids to and from school and even take the boy at times and she doesn’t have boys. She is really a great gal pal and I love her and we all need more of them.

Go be with your community! Be friends with your spouse and Have a friend group to hang with and confide in together but also separate from your spouse. Being loved and being social is one thing that helps us thrive. We need connection sometimes we need to ask our friends over for coffee and stop waiting for them to call us!

#SLWC2018

There is no wrong art

28 Sunday Jan 2018

Posted by in Be Present, Be You, Dance, Dance Like No One is Watching

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find and lose yourselfToday is another day at convention with the Girl. Last night she performed her solo for the first time. The solo that she didn’t want me to see it was all a surprise. I loved it, I loved the costume (except would add some rhinestones to the straps but she wants nothing to do with that!) She got some really great critique from one of the instructors here at the convention. She did great if I critiqued it (which I have not, I am trying to let the professionals do it) I would say get more emotionally into the dance. However, in talking to her she said she messed up a couple parts and felt that she did terrible. I looked pretty good so I know she is a critic of herself so that kind of showed only because she was thinking through it and only I could tell because well, I am her mom. I am glad I made her perform it here to go once through it before she competes next week!
Right now, I am watching Tap. The girl is taking tap off since her injury was her gastric which is a calf muscle and tapping works the calf muscle a lot. They are dancing to a song called “This Is Me” from the Greatest Showman. I am loving this song. My favorite line is “I make no apologies, This is me” I want to live this in my life more. I want my kids to live this way. Live out loud and make no apologies!
That’s part of dance and art in general! One purpose of art is to express of feelings our emotions. Or at least for a place to put our emotions. We put ourselves in a dance we do what the choreographer tells us to. But in dance we bring our life out own emotions. The choreographer saw a picture or had a thought of what they want that dance to look like or feel like and the dancers takes it applies their own experience and transforms it into…. well, ART! This is why I love dance, the performer may bring one thing that the choreographer did not intend but in that moment both emotions are realized along with the emotion and interpretation of the audience! Whatever you feel when you see art is right even if it was not the intended emotions or experience. Nothing is wrong in the world of art…it’s heaven!
I love how you can watch a performance and be inspired to grow, express, love, move or just be loud. You can be the performer and go to the darkest place in your world and get it out and at the end someone saw it and thought it was beautiful even when for you, it came from your ugly place. That’s where the inspiration happens. Like a phoenix our of the ashes of loneliness comes the most beautiful love song. All it takes is getting to the core, you, dancing, from that place that no one sees. Yet even when you dance from that place, they see your most vulnerable piece of you coming out in the safety of dance but they may still not see you they see themselves…that is what makes art of dance so beautiful and gorgeous!
Here this is where transformation happens! Be you be real dance like no one is watching because no one really sees you, they see the deepest most personal and beautiful part of you. They see you for who you are, but they decide who you are and that is okay it doesn’t change you because you are, or your art is who or what they need you to be. That is okay, that is what makes it beautiful!!
#SLWC2018

What Was I Thinking?

27 Saturday Jan 2018

Posted by in Be You, Dance, Dance Like No One is Watching, Mom Stuff, Raising Kids

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don't forget you love danceI really don’t know what I was thinking when I thought that I would blog during a dance convention. The Girl is at her first convention of the season. She has been injured so she missed the convention part of the last one her team did. She has sat out 2 of the classes so far because of pain, but is now in the last class of the day which is Hip Hop. I love watching her dance and I love watching these instructors teach. I brought a book to read, my Surface to blog and of course there is always the social media distraction on my phone, and all my mom friends. I really don’t need any distraction! I would be quite content just watching!

I am enjoying watching the Girl dance and sad that she is still having some knee pain. I hope that she can overcome this and dance to her hearts content witout pain. I want her to enjoy  her hobby. Not to mention she is so good, I want the world to see her!

I am super excited that I get to watch her solo tonight. She has sheltered me from seeing any of it. She chose a song from the newest Linkin Park album. She was selecting songs and this was my favorite of the top three. She of course didn’t select it because of that, if she knew it was my fave, she probably would have probably taken it off her list. (She is so much a teenage girl right now, “don’t let mom see I am having fun and no way will I enjoy something she suggests.”) She is dancing to “Nobody Can Save Me” She was listening to it today and I almost started crying just listening to the words and everything that is that song; What happend with Chester, emotions and her dancing to it! OMG so powerful. That whole album is so emotional. It was the last one before Chester Bennington committed suicide he wrote at least part of it for Chris Cornell who also committed suicide. I have listened to that album different since Chester passed away and have thought, “it sounds like a really detailed and long suicide note.”

Then my crazy mom head goes…she’s not depressed or having suicidal thoughts is she? Am I there for her enough? Is this teenage girl attitude really normal or a warning sign? It is  normal, right? I think so. I am doing my best to let her be who she is. There is fine balance, I hope to continue to walk the tight rope, that she likes me enough to come to me in times she needs someone but hates me enough to be a normal teenager…I let her be who she is, I love that girl. She talks about her feelings but she holds a lot in too. I think dance helps her ‘express’ herself but sometimes she holds back especially when I am watching. I can’t wait to see her solo and I hope she is going to put her emotion into it and I think it will be phenomenal!

I am really enjoying watching her learn and get into the new moves she is learning and having to adjust to protect that injured knee but as I watch her I can tell she is loving it. In her movements she is happy. It is so refreshing to watch. What is fun about these routines is that they can learn them and just dance. They don’t have to worry about being judged or performing it, they get to just have fun with it! They need more time like this to just dance for the love of dance.

Anyway, I am going back to watching dance! This is what I pay for right?!

#SLWC2018

 

This Growing up Thing is Hard on Me

05 Wednesday Jul 2017

Posted by in Be Present, Be You, Dance, Dance Like No One is Watching, Do You, Live in the Moment, Parenting

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Well, it has been a while since I have written. I can’t even remember when…to my loyal readers apologies. Today I am writing from Nationals. The Girl is competing in a Nationals Dance Competition. She is in 5 group numbers and a solo. Have I said how much I love to watch her dance? If you have read my blog you have read that a few times! This year the Girl turned 13, she is starting to become her own person. Not that she hasn’t always been her own person but she is just starting to grow up. She definitely wants her own identity. It used to be cute that everyone loved her mom and loved her mom being around but now it’s just not. Not to her anyway. The older dancers are still super sweet to me and seem to understand my pain when I am shunned by my daughter but the Girl just wants to grow her wings. I need to get out of her way and let her make a name for her.

This dance year I have decided it is my job to support her. Many things I hear my Coach Husband say is that parents just need to get out of their kids way. I need to learn that lesson it has been my mom work this year. There is a dance instructor for Liz Imperio who teaches a class called Raising Successful Children that I started but got too busy to finish the webinar (which has been a theme in my life this year) and it’s focus was to guide us parents in how to get out of our children’s way. I love watching her grow, I love watching her dance! There is a part of me that is struggling letting go of that mommy role that needs to be there to protect and guide my child. She is growing up I have taught her to think for herself and stand up for what is right and to advocate for herself. She doesn’t need me to do that because I taught her to be strong in herself! I taught her to not define herself in what other people think of her. And she does not. She changes for no one. She is who she is, she likes what she likes and for the most part doesn’t care or waiver for anything. Not even for me! Sometimes I wish she would for me but I should be proud that she doesn’t. Sometimes she does waiver to fit in with her friends. I feel for her in those moments because I have spent my life doing that and that is not what I want for her! I want her to be her, even if it hurts my feelings.

How did I teach her to do that when I am not strong in myself? How can I be that strong human I am teaching her to be when I am not that strong human myself? I am proud that she is independent. I love who she is. Sometimes I wish there was less Diva but other times I am so proud of that diva because that Dive protects her when mean girls are mean. And that Diva protects the girl who is getting picked on in a group by my child being the one to stand up to the mean one in the place of the child who is getting picked on or feeling bad when that child is too weak. I am proud of that diva! I pray that when I stifle the diva for my feelings that I don’t stifle the good out of her diva! How was I able to teach her these things? I have no idea how, but I am proud she has learned them!

I am going through yet another identity crisis in parenting, and I don’t even know what it is. I am obviously still her mom and she needs me and I know deep down she wants me around, but she wants me to keep my distance and not over shadow who she is or what she does. I get it! I was there, I may still be there with my mom. When she needs me I will be there. I have seen this happen recently. She does talk to me like a friend sometimes and I to her but she also knows that she must do what she is told and what is expected of her. I don’t really believe in being your child’s best friend until they are adults anyway but sometimes she is mine. She is the only one who can’t leave me and would never think of it, I think… Anyway, I want her to continue to grow in success and keep that diva spunk that will take her far and I just have to get over myself!

Now I have to go watch her solo I am so excited to see her dance! I love watching her on stage and in her element. It is her happy place I am so glad she has dance for that, lord knows she needs a place of her own to just BE. I love her!

#Dance2017dance parent

Sex for Stress

13 Tuesday Sep 2016

Posted by in Be You, Dance, Do You, Do Your Thing, Family, Uncategorized

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Hello friends. I have missed you. I miss blogging everyday! I miss sharing my stories with you. I was on the way to a Seahawks game yesterday and looked at my phone and thought of blogging but, I knew my hands would really act up and be painful if I blogged from my phone. The kids have started school. The girl said her first day was “terrible”. The boy’s first Pee Wee game was this weekend. He played amazing but the team still lost. There are so many things I want to share about every single one of these adventures but time is not on my side. Blogging is almost like a full time job or at least should be. I makes me think that maybe I need to plan my posts out better. I miss having time to blog. I also miss having sex with the hubs everyday! I miss Sex Love and Washing Clothes!!!

I love everything I am doing in my life. I love my life. The Hubs and I have had a few struggles a few weeks ago, but have got past it. Starting a new business has created a lot of stress in this household as it would in any household. Stress like that tends to cause the Hubs and I to argue a little more. More sex helps us in the arguing department so we have really (or at least I have) focused on having more sex. I know it sounds like avoiding problems but really it is coping with stress. So that has been a lot of what we do in our spare time. Which is what makes it tough right now for the Hubs to be gone for a week, he is at training for work! Boo!!!!

One more adventure that I have been working on is I am the new Drill Team Advisor at my daughter’s junior high. She has never been much interested in Drill Team but I was in Drill Team as a Jr High and High school student. It made a big impact in my life and would not want these girls to miss the opportunity and the chance to influence women of our future to get a better start being better women than we have before. Women need to be taught at a young age how to support each other and not compete with each other. We as a Drill Team are sisters and what we need to focus on is to lift up and support each other! I hope I can help the girls start a good solid life of good lady support for each other!

I need to go choreograph a tryout routine, wash dishes, do laundry and maybe even sleep. (No fucking the Hubs in gone, sadface)

#Sexforstress2016

 

My Little Dancer is not So Little Anymore

10 Friday Jun 2016

Posted by in Be You, Dance, Dance Like No One is Watching, Do You, Love, Mom Stuff

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Today is Dress rehearsal day! The Girl has one dance her ballet dance that they dance with scarves. Her first ever dance onstage was 10 years ago and they danced with scarves it was really reminiscent. I love watching her dance. I thought I saw something special in her that day on stage, but every parent sees something special in their kids on stage at that age!

All I wanted for her was to enjoy it and let it be her fun and her outlet and let her enjoy it! All I wanted was to find what made her heart smile! I think it does, she loves to dance but sometimes dance gets overwhelming and filled with drama and she gets a diva attitude! But onstage she release that energy that captivates me! That captivates her. She is a star! She is my shining star! I don’t know if there really is something special about her, more than being my daughter and a good dancer but I don’t care. There is something special about her. I love to see it I love to watch her dance!

I can’t wait to see where she goes in life she will go far! Maybe on a stage maybe in a classroom but I am thankful for dance giving her the confidence to be great and know when she is great. And for giving her the outlet that she needs to express herself, release frustrations of the drama of being a girl and a great dancer in a pool of good dancers.

I just love watching her dance. I hate seeing some of the logistical things hold her back. I want her to unleash her passion for dance (or whatever outlet she chooses) I want to see when that girl opens up and stops caring what people think about her, I want to see that how amazing will that be. She is one judgemental insecure friend away from that! I wish she could shut to voices out of her brain. She is amazing come watch her dance and you will see. I could not be more proud of who she is and what she can achieve. I just pray for road blocks to be removed from her journey to greatness and that she overcomes the struggle!

I love my Girl!

#Recommit2016

Missed Posting HMD!

09 Monday May 2016

Posted by in #Everyday2015, Baseball, Dance, Do Your Thing, Family, Mom Stuff, Running, Working Mom

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I haven’t posted since Wednesday I don’t think! I have thought about topics many times but haven’t had the time or taken the time to sit down and do it. I had a busy kid weekend baseball tournament and Dance competition and I also had time to run as well! I just got back from a run this morning too! What a great way to start a Monday and week off in a positive way!

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Yesterday was Mother’s Day we usually do something like a dinner with extended family but we had a baseball game in the morning and the Inlaws have purchased a new piece of property and we working on their new home. So we headed out there after the game and hung out in the quietness of their woodsy new place. So for now I have to get ready for the week and my Monday at work. Hope you all have a great day and a great week!

Go forth, exercise everyday, eat right and have sex everyday! Let’s focus on taking care of ourselves, being positive and healthy! Love yourself this week!

#comitt2016

Dance, don’t judge!

03 Tuesday May 2016

Posted by in Dance, Uncategorized

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Never miss a chance todance

The girl is dancing this weekend. She is in a convention and doing really well, but she is dancing in the back of the room. I think doing well but may not be getting noticed in a huge room full of people! Way too many people. She is a respectful good dancer! She doesn’t like to look too eager but she wants to get noticed and she is not always getting noticed. I am trying to step back and encourage her and not tell her how to be because when I do I feel like she pulls back even more. Why can’t my kid be respectful, and still stand out and put herself where she gets noticed? Answer: because she is my kid and I was just like that! Which is why I was 2nd Princess. I was nice and good enough to be chosen but not stand out enough to be the queen. The queen was more competitive and not necessarily “cut throat” but she was more edgy more in your face and not afraid to say she would be the best at the job. My girl is like me in that. She is better and more talented but she won’t tell you she is better than the girl next to her unless the girl next to her is not around…. Not a bad characteristic and if she doesn’t want to audition for real life jobs it might work out okay for her. I would love to see her learn how to do that better though.

On a side note the boy is at baseball today and he was 2-2 with 4 RBI in the second inning today! Sports are so much easier to be your best because it is not subjective like in dance if you score more points you win. It has nothing to do with someones opinion of you. In baseball you don’t have to get noticed, you just have to do what you do and hit the ball, get outs, touch all the bases and run fast. NO subjectivity until they decide who is the MVP but that doesn’t’ really matter. In dance it is all about who likes you, who sees you and what impression you make. How do I teach her how not to care what people think when she is being judged in her favorite activity for fun. It’s all about what people think!!! I hate that she has to be judged and then that is what she is defined as in her “sport” but honestly after talking to her it doesn’t seem to bother her. I want so badly for her to be noticed and recognized for the great dancer she is. So either she is not that great or she just doesn’t NEED the recognition to feel good about herself. I with I could be more like that!

#Whyjudge2016