29 Days

 It's going to be a two post week.

Mostly because I was able to go to champ hard shoe class for the first time since February 2019(?) last night.

In a perfect world, I would probably alternate going to the studio once a week on a soft shoe or hard shoe night and then switch the following week (remember when I had no choice but to do this one year and I whined and cried about it? Talk about a mindset shift!). Unfortunately, Jon often closes at work during the week so we aren't using my mother in law for day care every day and right now he teaches music lessons for a family on Thursday nights which is why Saturday Private lessons are the best compromise at the moment. Honestly, if it weren't for the fact that his hockey team had a playoff game last night and he didn't do the music lessons, I probably wouldn't have gone. I literally missed a month of privates because of Dom/Myself/Christian being sick and Easter Break so I'm glad I was able to make it work. Bringing Dominik is definitely not a choice for these classes, so Jon would have to be around if I did go more often.

I'm proud to say that I was able to keep up maybe 75% of the time. Warm ups and Drills were no problem and I think for what we did step wise, it wasn't too bad. We had to run our first step 3 times without stopping, our third step 3 times without stopping and our second step once before doing a full. It got really ugly in that third step, but I never stopped and considering this is the first time I've danced with someone who isn't my TC at the same time since before Dom was born, I'm pretty pleased.

So I've done two fulls now. I feel like yesterday was still slightly better than last week but I still have a ways to go. I'm hoping that adrenaline will help a little, but I have still 4 weeks to work. It was nice to get compliments about some of my stationary pieces because I drill the crap out of those. Certain moving things were better during drills than my steps but I'm hoping that means it's coming. I honestly think the biggest issue was my arms last night. I ended up using a TheraBand to keep them in, but I can't exactly do that at a feis...

Tomorrow I get to have a private with Courtney as Christian is busy and it will be mostly on slip jig. I'll also be dancing with my dress on. I'm kind of hoping my stamina issues will be less apparent in this dance. Stay tuned I guess. 

I think the bigger thing to figure out is that a feis I was planning on doing at the end of June isn't happening so my options now are to immediately compete the weekend after Hartford (It's one of my favorite competitions where I did decent in grades) or do like 6 or 7 between the last week of August and the Oireachtas...😬 It's so unfortunate because I will literally be in Delaware the week before the Delaware Feis and Catskill Mountain is the day we head home so that's not an option either) Part of my bargain with Jon was that I wouldn't be competing as often as I was when I chasing firsts in prizewinner for money and time consumption reasons...I guess we'll see what Courtney thinks. I'm still not 100% sure I can do the Oireachtas without attending camp. I know my situation is different, but...yeah.

Talk to you soon,

Kay