Progress is made. I am still sad about my older daughter's transformation, but I don't feel like crying when I look at her dreadlocks, and Alison wasn't upset tonight about gymnastics. It went way better than yesterday, which was after all, Monday. Last night was tough; when one's child does an extremely difficult sport at a high level, you can't get too engaged in it, or you can get sucked in. Every day is NOT a good day. The coach is not always in a great mood. You will have aches and pains. In a high level program, it is like Yoda (and Fat Blogger) would say, " do or not do there-is-no-try" Today was also wonderful because I got to see my school friends. You would think that since I'm on summer break, I would NOT want anything to remind me of work. You would be wrong. It would take me a whole blog to explain the relationships, history and friendships we share. We once all taught in the world language department at the same school. Now some are retired, one has moved to a different building, but we still get together for birthdays. If laughter and fun add years to our lives, we will all live to be 200! If only we had had Mr. Subarashi take our photo while he was there, you could have seen us giggling and snacking, and throwing ourselves on the floor over asinine administrative decisions. (well, OK, that was only me, but everyone else felt like it!) I leave you with some really cool photos of Alison, our gymnast, in action at YMCA Nationals. (click to get a larger view)
The professional can get these shots that I can't. (not allowed to use flash or get too close) This is called a sheep jump and Olympic gymnasts do this. I didn't realize how far off the beam she was when she did the move--eek!
The photographer took lots of pictures of her on bars because she has such GREAT form; unfortunately, she makes funny faces while she does just about everything.
"I'm finished!" Doesn't she look relieved to be done? She had three clean bar routines at Nationals, and couldn't even do ONE decent one before we left. We need to go to Wisconsin for all our gymnastics!
