A small drama that could have been a big drama emerged last night shortly after my first ConFEISsion.  We only had one Ghillie. For you non Feis folks, that is one of the dance shoes an Irish Dancer wears.  The other is a hard shoe for the tap-like sound and this is the soft one that supports those magical one-legged leaps through the air. All that to say, we found we had only one shoe.  Drama ensued.

We called home to see if it could be sent.  Mark (husband) turned around for home midway to a Fourth of July gathering (Yes, us Jersey folks celebrate early.) to search for the shoe.  My thinking was that he could still make FedEx. As he searched the house,  I tried to manage my dancer who was holding back her emotions better than I expected her to.  Low and behold, no shoe was found at home and for the cost of the FedEx, I knew there’d be a vendor on site eventually who could sell us a new pair.  Maya turned it around quickly and declared that a new, stiffer shoe just may help her be a little more bouncy in her steps.

“Okay!”, I said enthusiastically to her declaration as I mentally worried that new shoes could be a little painful without a chance to break them in.

Well, off to bed we went and today we hit The Magic Kingdom in some mild rain by the opening bell at 9am.  We lucked out BIG TIME.  We waited no more than 15 minutes for anything and hit Space Mountain three times and some other favorites twice.  My feis mom friend, Megan and Maya’s buddy Carli were our hangout mates today and we made a great team.  It took Megan and I longer than we had hoped to drag the girls out of the park, though.  We hoped for some R&R for them before practicing, but they were having too much fun.

Back at the hotel, we did get those new shoes.  They are stiff, but Maya gave them a good workout as she and Carli practiced.  Actually, their practice was more of a fight for turf as the hotel is now jam-packed with Irish dancers and those ‘Starpower’ dancers (not “Dancepower” as I mistakenly called them yesterday) who are here for the duration of our competition.  Carli and Maya kept moving further down the grand hall in front of the ballroom as older girls with longer legs and louder music moved in on their turf. Nonetheless, they were great with each other, sharing floor space and feedback to get their best to happen tomorrow.

So far, the moms are behaving.  No ugly cat fights or nastiness, but you can feel everyone’s tension rising as the start of the big competition gets closer.

Maya is asleep as I write this after a major chocolate high from dinner.  I am trying to forget how un-Weight-Watcher-like my dinner was and hoping I can sleep.  The high-drama starts tomorrow.  I’ll try to give two reports while we wait for results.  Just writing that throws me into a wave of nausea.  I’ll get introspective about why later.