Parade Day
May 17th, 2008
Today I am walking in a two mile parade with my nine year old daughter. It’s not much of a parade. Of course, having grown up in New Orleans, my parade standards are pretty high. For years, her school has entered a “float” in the parade, consisting of a decorated pick up truck or, when feeling fancy, a decorated trailer being pulled by a pick up truck. Last year, the school music teacher started a marching band (about 10 kids) and they walked along with the float wearing band tee-shirts and jeans.
This year, we’re really stepping it up. We have the float, the band (up to 20 or so kids now, still in band tee shirts, no fany uniforms for our little school) and, drum roll please, a drill team! Guess who is the drill team coach? You got it, me. There are five girls in grades 3 and 4. We have pom poms, band tee shirts and white skorts.
I choreographed a little routine for them to the band’s one and only song for the parade, “Smoke on the Water.” We’ve been practicing once a week, sometimes twice, and today is our first parade (we have one more in June).
If not for having lost some weight and built some stamina, I would not be doing this. If not for the support I’ve gotten here at 3fc, I would not have accomplished my weight loss so far and said stamina improvement…. so thank you, friends!
I think about myself a year ago today. I didn’t even want to go to the stupid parade. Too hot and, god forbid, I was not wearing a pair of shorts last summer. Even just to go watch the parade I’d have to park and walk several blocks, no way that was happening. Way too much effort! And the idea of working on even a simple pom pom routine with the girls would have been humiliating.
So even though I am spending my day in the heat, walking with a somewhat spastic drill team to a band that can’t keep a beat in a thoroughly lame hometown parade, I feel like the grand marshall of the Tournament of Roses Parade. I spend a lot of time getting down on myself, belittling my accomplishments because I always want it to be more, to be better, to happen faster. But today is about recognizing where I am, how good it feels to be here and enjoying it.
May 17th, 2008 at 9:03 am
OMG! This sounds adorable! I wish I could be there to see you and your troup walk the parade route!
Amazing how much our attitudes about everything can change in what is really a pretty short time…I mean, it took me years to get to my state of lazy apathy, but relatively less time to get out there & start enjoying the things that really should be enjoyed.
I hear you about the hassle factor…I used that excuse to stay off the beach for years cause you gotta load the car & unload it & walk with all that stuff in the sand & walking in sand is hard & it’s hot. & here’s this thing that most people enjoy & I’m treating it like work.
Thanks for helping me put some perspective on my day…I may be afraid of the scale today, but I’m getting out there & that’s the measurement that should count the most!
Knock ‘em dead today tiny!
May 17th, 2008 at 9:49 am
[...] of change in my attitude & in my body that I need to remember when I step on the scale again! tiny2b is reflecting on a similar situation as she prepares to march in a parade that only last year she [...]