One-man (pyramid) to rule them all… June 27, 2013

So the last few times I have (embarrassingly infrequently) shared stories with y’all, they’ve been on the heavy side. This Cheer Mom/K convo took place at this year’s national competition in Florida.

 

CM: (after dutifully taking notes on each routine as taught by last year’s graduating cheer moms) No offense to your team, K, but I guess I’m a little confused. I counted the tricks and flips the other teams did and some of the stuff looks way harder than what y’all are doing. I don’t understand how y’all moved on. I mean, I’m glad. But I don’t get it.

K: What were you counting?

CM: Well, they had more people doing more twirly flips, but their ending pyramid looks about the same as yours, so shouldn’t they have more points?

K: No, mom. Our pyramid was way more difficult (you’re going to have to trust me on the amount of exasperation expressed on the word “way”).

CM: Oh. How can you tell?

K: We had a one-man pyramid. All of the stunts were one-mans.

CM: Which one is that? The one that is really two people holding up a third? So it is really like a three-man?

K: NO. There is only one base holding up the top girl’s weight. The other is there just to set up the stunt.

CM: So…like three people are involved?

K: Whatever.

Number 25, You’re Next March 24, 2013

We had our first major “last time” this week. Not second to last. It was the very last time K will try out to be a high school cheerleader. Cheer has been a huge part of the Cheer Family for the last four years. It has dictated vacations, required tons of money, massive amounts of time, football games, TV appearances, national competitions, and volunteer opportunities. It has taught K the pettiness of teenage girl drama (which she miraculously escaped in middle school), that team members work together to accomplish a greater goal even if they have disagreements, that hard work and determination and sheer will-power can be rewarded, and that one mistake in the briefest of seconds can bring everything down around you.

 

It might be silly. I don’t care. I’ve seen K grow from a little girl into an almost-woman. Watched her grow in a sport she knew next to nothing about into a team leader. She has developed strong new friendships and she has nurtured the ones that she started high school with. It’s a strange thing to watch your child grow toward adulthood. To help them walk down a path that eventually leads away from you. And hopefully will lead back to you again. Cheer isn’t responsible for all of that, but there’s no denying it was a big part of what we’ve done these last few years.

 

K says this is her last tryout ever. I disagree. If we find a college willing to hand out scholarships, she will have more in her future.

 

Five observations on cheerleading October 17, 2012

Today’s top five comes to you in the wee hours of Wednesday morning. insomnia strikes again.

1. Cheer is expensive. Not just in money (think: car payment), but also in the amount of time it requires. Driving to/from and attending practices, competitions, games, tryouts, clinics, etc. Upside: watching the flipping. Downside: it is extremely freaking expensive.

2. Cheer encourages hard work and commitment. The girls push through pain and disappointment. Many are also great students. Mine didn’t have time to date until junior year, though that isn’t typical. Upside: hard work is good and useful as a functional member of society. Downside: little time for non-cheer type people exposure.

3. Cheerleaders are associated with negative stereotypes. Snobby, slutty, airhead. I heard these things to describe cheer when K first made the team. Then I told Cheer Dad to shut up (kidding!). Upside: you learn that stereotypes aren’t always true. Downside: you learn that most Cheer Mom stereotypes are spot on (present company excepted, but of course).

4. Cheerleading is contagious. We didn’t have baby cheerleaders in our house. K decided on a whim to try out (a story for another day) and BAM. We were hit full force with glittery craziness. Now M is cheering. For an all-star team. Shudder. Upside: at least I know what to expect now. Downside: four more years never sounded so long (including politically. Zing).

5. Cheer encourages healthy conflict resolution. Mostly. The ladies don’t always get along. A few can’t stand each other. Like ever, ever. Ever. But they still are forced to work together, hold each other up (literally). Upside: some day, K will be put on a team project with a moron. Instead of losing her job by way of moron-dealing-ineptitude, she will know how to shut up and get the end goal accomplished (one would hope). Downside: cheerleading is freaking expensive.

What? You are seriously surprised I mention it twice?

Current mood: ra ra ooh la la

Stranded at the drive-in March 22, 2012

Ok, not a drive-in. As promised, my pre-midnight premiere post. I wish I could say that I read The Hunger Games ages ago like all those other cool kids. I didn’t. I read the books after I saw the first trailer. The very first one. There. That’s better.

Are you ready for some funny stories from national competition? I can’t hear youuuuuuuuu (that’s a joke…I swear).

1. The Non-Cheer-Family Family Cheer. We stayed at the Disney All-Star. All of the competition teams stayed there or close by. Thousands and thousands of cheerleaders. In the cafeteria crowding up the lines and practicing their cheers, in the breeze ways practicing their cheers from 6am-midnight, in their rooms (practicing their cheers). Rooms and rooms and rooms of cheerleaders. But…not all the rooms. Some of the rooms had regular vacationers. Average Joe, Non-Cheer families. With no clue that they’re exciting, (maybe) once-in-a-lifetime trip will plant them square in the middle of Spiritopia. I felt bad for them. Not Chris. He said that they should have checked the events page before booking a trip. Did YOU know they had an events page? I did not. Anyhow, on the last day, there was the family gathered in the (now empty) open area. They did an all hands in, “all for one, one for all, yay, team our family!” Then they must have sensed my curious stare. Because dad explained: “there have been cheerleaders here all week. It’s been nuts.” Sorry, guys. That probably sucked for you. I followed then into the cafeteria with no lines and ten open cashiers. I think I saw tears in their eyes.

2. The Seat Savers. There were several announcements that we were not to save seats. We really didn’t need to. There were only six of us chaperones (As opposed to some teams who brought 75-100 fans along (from New York!)). We got there pretty early and found a set together in the middle, second section back. One of us got up because she saw a gap in the front section and wanted to count them to see if we’d fit. What she got instead was a highly glittered mom waving a finger in her face (mind you, she hadn’t even spoken yet…just stood there), saying “uh-uh, no ma’am. These seats are saved. No. Ma’am.” Was it petty that I secretly celebrated when their team didn’t move on? I can’t say that I care. Ha.

3. There was a grumpy old lady at the Animal Kingdom the day we went. The girls had just jumped off the safari ride and were checking out the monkeys in quite possibly the least annoying way possible. GOL started stomping away, but not before making sure we all heard her “I HATE cheerleaders” comment. And that, my friends, is the first time I’ve seen a geriatric hissy fit. Clearly, someone is stillllll harboring high school cheer resentment.

4. Through a quirk of fate, our group got to be first in line to see princesses Aurora, Belle, Cinderella, and Tiana the last night. They were really sweet to the girls and it made them giggle all the way home. That was a highlight of the trip for me. I know I said this before, but I had the most awesome group.

5. And I think this is all my thumb can handle for one night. And it’s not a story. It’s a fun fact. Cheerleaders are farters. I actually learned this by driving carpool, but realized the universiality of the fact when hundreds surrounded me. And not cute little poots. I mean f-a-r-t-s. As in, on several occasions we would do room checks and literally be grossed out by the smell. Sorry girls, cats out of the bag.

Current mood: on fire…

Va-Va-Varisty, Go Big Orange

To the ORANGE-AND-WHITE-AND-BLUE

 

 

2012-2013 Varsity Cheerleader. Proud mom alert. Yes, folks, that’s correct. The cheer stories shall continue. And I’m fixing to park my fanny in line waiting with kamillion other people whilst waiting for the Hunger Games to start, so I should have time to stock up a few blogs to tickle your fancies.

 

Current mood: brief

You Don’t Have To Go Home, But You Can’t Stay Here March 18, 2012

I just realized that I started this post exactly one month ago today. If I can’t complete a post in a month’s time, I have some serious issues.

 

This was the post to summarize my grand and glorious time as chaperone to the national high school competition. And just let me say…it was, indeed, a grand and glorious time. It was also a gut-wrenching, terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad time. Only briefly, granted. But those two hours or so of horror were enough to generate a text to my mom that said “I hate this. I will never come again” (I changed my tune later and am now trying to ferret out a way to go again next year. Despite the fact that we are throwing braces onto the younger one’s teeth, thereby limiting my disposable income).

 

Shall I start at the beginning? The flight was great. Sure, we had to get there before normal people have entered REM and college students have even gone to bed…BUT (to me anyway), the early start and noon arrival in Florida was much preferable to some of the other teams that traveled for 12+ hours that day on crowded flights and long layovers. Travel documents also freak me out a little bit. I’m pretty OCD when it comes to certain things and re-checking plane tickets/passports/arrival and departure times/etc. is one of those certain things. For this trip, not only was I responsible for my own plane ticket (to AND from Florida…already printed and distributed), but I was given food vouchers for four meals and bus transfer passes. For myself AND FIVE OTHER PEOPLE. Oh my goodness. Y’all can’t even begin to understand how many times I counted to six that morning. Anywho. We made it. I didn’t lose anything at all. And, as I mentioned, we arrived and missed a lot of the crowds. We were able to check-in easily and (in very un-Disney fashion), we were able to GET in to our rooms early (and don’t get me wrong…I heart Disney more than the average adult. That being said, we almost always arrive early when we go as a family and I can’t remember a single time that they were able to get us in the room before 3:00 p.m.). With a few thousand cheerleaders, coaches, chaperones, and parents incoming, I think that’s pretty impressive. By the way…all this traveling and grabbing luggage and getting settled and blah, blah, blah showed me very quickly that I had the best chaperone group on the trip. Six seriously awesome, responsible, respectful, silly, fun-loving young ladies. I still miss hearing them giggle amongst each other as we walked through the parks with their inside jokes (one of which I *think* I deciphered by the end of the trip to mean that the person walking our way was wearing something hideously inappropriate…and they were generally correct).

 

But I digress. That was Day 1. Day 2 was also pretty care-free and easy. The girls had some practice in the morning. Then we went to Epcot, which is my all-time, absolutely favorite park. It is also where this picture was taken with my three-year-old, dusty, slow cell phone. But I still caught it. Score. I realized much later on that by indulging the girls in “let’s jump off this 2.5′ cement wall onto the cement ground below” fun and games was probably not wise on the eve of their national competition. Luckily, I did not make the mistake of showing it to their coach. Next time, I will save the potentially bone-breaking photo ops for the days after we compete.

 

None of this sounds very horrific, does it? Day 3 is where I about lost my lunch. That’s not entirely accurate. I felt so bad for the girls that I couldn’t eat lunch. Yes, I’ll go back. It was prelims day. Hooray. There was something like 49 groups in their category. Lots of great schools from all over. They had to score pretty high in order to make it through to the next round. Our JV team did a great job. Phew. They’re through to the finals. And then came Varsity’s turn. You know how you can do something right 999,999 times and then the millionth time you do it, everything that possibly could go wrong does? Like things that have never gone wrong are wrong? And things that always go wrong are wrong? And everything in between was wrong? Yeah. That pretty much sums up how the preliminary run went. And if I, the least cheer-knowledgable human being except for that infant two aisles over from me knew that there was a problem, there was a problem. For two hours, everybody waited for the inevitable news that the V team would not be moving on. That was miserable, no lie. You cannot blow sunshine up the (cheer)skirt of a teenager. They know everything, anyway. And as a parent who likes to go make things right? Torture. There was nothing I could do. None of the competitions or exhibitions or show-offs I had attended in the last two years prepared me for the heart-break these girls were feeling at their final, ultimate competition of the year. And for some of them, for good. So I floundered in my inability to go over and hug them all as they cried. I did, however, pray for a miracle. And those were my words: “Lord, we need a miracle” that I spoke ten seconds before they announced that against all odds, our team made it through to semi-finals. Oh my goodness. I do not confess to know how scoring goes. Something about potential and skill level and ability and blah, blah, blah. THEY MADE IT THROUGH.

 

The rest of the trip could only be better. And it was. The Varsity girls made it through semis and into finals. They placed 12th in the nation. JV placed 2nd. It was an exciting time and one of the only times in my life that I could seriously apply that overly-used term “emotional rollercoaster” to the actual range of emotions I felt. My awesome group continued to be awesome. The other chaperones were awesome, and despite those stereotypical movies and TV shows that you see out there, I experienced exactly zero level of drama from any front. It was a fun, hard trip and I will absolutely do it again.

 

That doesn’t mean that there weren’t things that will make you giggle about this trip. I am just tired of typing and I’m sure you’re tired of reading, so I shall save them for the next post, wherein I’ll tell you all about the non-cheer family family cheer, the land mine of seat-saving, Disney princesses, random room checks, and more.

 

Tomorrow I will be out buying a pair of black soffee shorts and a white t-shirt, which can only mean one thing: it’s try-out week.

 

Current mood: relieved that I finally finished this post

Daddy issues December 29, 2011

WordPress always wants me to name my posts first. It’s very rare that I know what I’m gonna talk about first…usually I just ramble until I find a theme and THEN I go back and name or rename it.

Do you wanna know what’s worse than cheer moms? Cheer dads. UGH. Seriously. I’ll start by saying that my sweet husband is NOT a cheer dad. He enjoys going to the football games, but I know better than to ask him to attend a competition. He will drive the carpool if I need some help, but instead of going inside the building, he stays in the car and naps. He helps pay cheer bills…but he ain’t any happier about it than I am.

Last year, there was a guy sitting innocently enough in the back of the tumbling practice observation room. One of the moms leaned over and whispered, “don’t say ANYTHING MEAN about ANYONE while that guy is here…he will tell all the other parents and the coach.” Aside from being surprised at the totally unnecessary warning (as I hadn’t met and/or spoken to anyone about anything at all yet), I was also in wonderment that this seemingly mild-mannered looking man was so notorious that he required a warning. After a year and a half of sitting through various practices and speaking to him several times, I still wonder about it, but don’t get it.

Enter this year’s new dad. You know that guy who knows everything about everything? And no matter what anybody else says, there is something that will need to be corrected in their statement and by golly he’s gonna be the one to do the correcting? Yeah. This is that guy. He knows everything about cheer, football, tumbling, raising children, animals, reptiles, illness, wellness, trucks, babies, boyfriends, breakfast, geography, gas prices, fundraising, and clothing. At least this is a brief list of things I have personally heard his self-proclaimed expertise on. Don’t believe me? Just ask him. He has high expectations for his child and the team. Which is fine. But I really wish I didn’t have to listen to them every week. I think I’m gonna have to add headphones to the book and/or iPhone game that I bring to keep myself too busy to talk. Because even when I am not discussing things with Super Cheer Dad, his convos with others are at a volume that seeps into my preoccupied consciousness.

When he starts in on his superior knowledge on periods and labor pains, it’s on.

Current mood: holly jolly

3/8/18 – this is the only post that I am adding an addendum to. As I mention, at this point in the cheer mom game, I rarely spoke to anybody at all. And we’re talking over a year in. I didn’t know that I would later meet some of my best friends while sitting in the gym waiting room watching our kids practice. Once I stepped out from behind my anti-social walls, I met the second cheer dad and his sweet wife. He does, indeed, know a little bit about a wide, wide variety of topics. He can be loud (as can I). And he has one of the biggest hearts I’ve ever known. He supported the team completely, volunteering even after his daughter graduated and absolutely has forgotten more about cheer than I’ve ever learned. While I don’t really give a rip if anybody is offended by anything else I wrote almost a decade ago, I do want anybody who reads this to know that (despite my grumpy, introverted initial impression) he is an amazing man and friend.

 

Till all I see is a sky full of lighters November 19, 2011

Oh, yall. Guess what tomorrow is.

 

COMPETITION DAY (day) (day) (day) (day). Sidebar: if you didn’t read the previous sentence in an radio announcer voice, complete with echo, you should probably stop reading immediately. Oh, all right. You can go back and read it in the voice now. End sidebar…(day) Yup. Regional competition. And guess what else. This year, I know the difference between this competition, and last week’s practice, and January’s State, and February’s Nationals. What, what? Ugh, I hate trendy verbiage. I don’t even know how to punctuate a double what properly. At any rate, props to Cheer Mom (or mad props, if you want to take slang back a few years. Yo.).

 

This year, I am excited. And yes, I remember that last year, I complained bitterly about misprinted calendars. And even more bitterly about teenagers who don’t tell their mom that calendars were misprinted resulting in a five-hour-too-early-arrival and subsequent watching of a quadrillion baby cheer squads. And yes, I remember that I made shameless fun of the stupid mascot competitions and their stupid skits and their stupid props, going so far as to post a link so that you, too, could mock the hard-working, probably very sweaty teenagers. And YES, YES ALREADY, I remember that I scoffed at the whole idea of the bid system as being a racket and that if I walked in there with a bow, a pair of poms, and a cartwheel, that I could also receive a bid to Nationals (all for the low, low price of $1995.00, payable to your competition company). BUT, all that aside…wait, have I complained about the money yet? Been there? Banged that gong? Beat that dead horse? Fine. Have it your way. I won’t even mention that I will have to pay to see my own child compete after paying FOR her to compete and paying for her to PREP to compete. But all THAT aside – I am super psyched. I forgot how much fun this time of the year is. It’s (kinda) cooler outside. I get to spend the whole day with Cheer Grammie, which I’ve been doing a lot of lately because we’ve been selling crafty items that CG has made to underwrite Cheer – The Sequel (Sophomore Year). Sidebar #2:  want to support Cheer Mom’s sanity and wallet? Click here to buy above mentioned crafty items. I am also learning to knit so that maybe next year, I will be able to provide some crafty items, too, and not just provide the salesmanship. Also? That site is full of small-business artisans trying to make a go of their craft – a kind-of baby Etsy, if you will. Look around to see what else you can find and support REAL craftsmanship this Christmas. But only after you buy something from us first. Ha. But no, seriously. I’m not joking. And if you place a custom order, I will totally name the product after you, complete with a witty (to me) description. You can’t beat that with a stick.

 

Anyhow, back to competition. I get to spend it with my mom, which is always fun and since I’ve read the (correct) instructions carefully, I will arrive just in time for the big girls to compete. Actually, I will probably arrive a bit early so that I can a) get a patch for K’s jacket, and b) find a seat amidst another school’s parents so that I can hide from other cheer moms and not have to have cheer mom discussions. After a brief talk with my kiddo earlier, it appears there is a high likelihood that there will be a lot of “discussing” going on. This way, I can practice my knitting, which makes me feel like the oldest thirty-three year old I know. And watch the flips, which as you know are my favorite. And it’s good that I’m going now, because (in what is quite possibly the world’s worst segue) I’ll also be practicing watching the girls as I am going to be a CHAPERONE to Florida in February. Could I BE any more excited? OK, I probably could, because I don’t get to bring my honey along and everybody knows that Disney World is more awesome when you’re there with your best friend, but I’m still super pumped. Can you imagine the blogs that will result from that trip? I’ll have writing material for months. Provided I will be able to find time to write them. I seriously have one that has been rolling around in my head for close to three months. In fact, I am going to post writing prompts now so that I can find them when I come back:

 

1. Granola and life’s little lessons

2. Playoffs? But it’s competition season. Surely you don’t expect us to cheer for FOOTBALL games.

3. Dance v. cheer – observations and hypotheses based on today’s ten hour stint at a dance festival

4. Dance v. cheer, part 2 – reflections on the stupidity of exposing oneself to that many poorly edited pop music clips in a 48-hour period

 

And with that, I bid you ado.

 

Current mood: sore

https://mandymaetaylor.scentsy.us – or you can check this place out, too.

 

 

It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to October 13, 2011

Oh my goodness! No post in over a month? I am deeply apologetic. And busy, obviously. So cut me a break.

A friend recently emailed me and asked how my birthday was (October 5th, if you’re wondering…). To which I replied:

My birthday was a bit of an adventure. It was a Wednesday, so of course I was here (at work). Then I left to join my birthday dinner, and of course I was late because I never get out of here when I say I am, so my food was cold. THEN halfway through my second…shall we say “celebratory beverage,” I get a call from K (who was at practice), crying, to which I hear….”stunt….excited…jump…ankle…birthday…mad…ruin…wahhhh” and then the coach takes the phone and explains that she hit a particularly hard stunt perfectly and celebrated by jumping up and clicking her heels leprechaun-style (although my phone was kind of fuzzy, so I didn’t understand the word “leprechaun” and was confused most of the evening until I actually saw her) and when she landed, she rolled her ankle and at first her other coach was just mad at her for hurting herself and made her sit in the corner, but they had just walked over there and realized that K’s ankle and most of the skin surrounding it had instantly bruised and there was some sort of giant knot and now they think she needs to go and have it looked at by a doctor that evening (mind you, this is 8:00p) to have it x-rayed. And by the way, says coach, she is crying and is afraid you’ll be mad at her. So I chugged the other half of my beer and told the coach that by the time I reached the gym, practice will be over and so I’ll just let her ride bring her to me and I’ll have my ER-experienced nurse father look at it and decide whether we need to take her in RIGHT THEN or whether we can wait until the morning (and a lower co-pay). About this time, I received a text from the mom taking her home telling me that she was crying, trying to hold it back, and (by the way) she’s really worried about how mad I’ll be. So we drive back to my parents, where her ride drops her off. She is pulling out as we pull in and she rolls down her window and says “don’t be too mad at her!” and drives away. So I walk into the living room where she is sobbing about how sorry she is. At which point I lose it and say (with a slightly elevated vocal volume) “WHY DO YOU KEEP TELLING EVERYBODY I’M GOING TO BE MAD THAT YOU HURT YOURSELF?? I SOUND LIKE THE WORST PARENT EVER! I’M CONCERNED, BUT NOW THEY ALL THINK THAT I AM PISSED OFF THAT YOU ARE HURT AND NOT CONCERNED!” And she starts crying even harder and says “because it’s your b-b-b-b-irthd-d-d-day and I r-r-r-ruined it.” Oh. Dad says it’s sprained, but he can’t give her a doctor’s note to sit out and rest it, so we spent the rest of my birthday at Texas Med Clinic (after I drove home and brushed my teeth so I wouldn’t appear to have been getting sloshed while my daughter injured herself), then stopped by Walgreens on the way home where my mother bought me the good Mucinex (the –D form that you have to get from behind the counter after they fingerprint you and take your blood type), because – did I mention? I had a full-blown sinus infection and cough of some sort. “And many mooooooooooooore.”

Current mood: 33

The Cheese Stands Alone August 24, 2011

I have only allowed two other cheer moms access to my FB page and, it follows, this blog. I carefully try not to describe any person or any situation so clearly that they would be evident to the casual reader. I’m sure that sometimes, the thing I ridicule is evident. Such is life. The legalistic angel on my shoulder says that if you don’t want to become the subject of a blog mocking your actions, you…shouldn’t act like that in public. We’ll just consider this your practice to not end up on a show like “Cops,” shall we? If you keep the drama and white-trashedness to a minimum, I would have nothing snarky to say. Hmmm…upon re-read, it appears that it’s more like a legalistic devil. I suppose the angel would have a bit more compassion.

At any rate, I don’t necessarily want to be a pariah. I want to sit alone at the side of the gym ignoring everybody else because I want to. Not because I’m afraid they would spit on me. So I keep my exposure to carefully selected cheer moms who (I hope) will recognize this for what it is. Also…and this is going to sound sooooo cocky….I don’t have time for any more friends. I feel like I’ve said this before. But for real? My hubby and I just instituted a “get into your room by 9:00p so we can actually see each other without being under your watchful eyes” time frame on our children. And today? I scheduled a lunch with one of my favorite work people for TWO WEEKS from now. And by scheduled, I mean that I totally and completely sent her a calendar invite. And my best friend – we have caught up in sporadic patches of time for the last six months. So I don’t have the hours in my day to be your BFF. Or even your F.

This might make me a super-bad cheer mom. Or maybe a super-bad friend.

Current mood: selfish