Loud

Almost no sleep in the night… adrenaline dreams (two wasps in my hair to start), warm room, sharing a double with Oxbear (maybe never before attempted?)… before five o’clock alarm
Patience’s hair gets rolled up and fitted with the usual wig of curls (uniformity matters here)… slip on the friendship bracelet of shiny candy-like beads that Patience made for me… it reads… “best WOW in the world”

Into a six degree windchill…
Solo competition… treble jig and reel… beautiful dancing from Patience… “That is the best you have ever danced,” one teacher congratulates her. “You left it all up there.” … another teacher asks for a picture with her, adds that Patience’s battery was “fully charged”
Meanwhile E picks up soft pretzels and listens to a podcast on the great German latrine disaster of 1184, maybe too loudly relaying information about cesspits to me as dancers in twinkling rhinestones leap across Stage A
As Oxbear drops E off at the hotel and gathers cheeseburgers for Patience and myself on the big break waiting for first results… I almost fall out of my chair from sleepiness

Patience recalls
Trad set
ribs and Indiana grits in the restaurant
waiting waiting waiting
loud loud loud
47th out of the Midwest’s 115 top crust of nine year-olds
one of Patience’s best friends makes Worlds (Dublin in April)
leave sometime after ten in arctic temps

…tired