phone malfunction badly timed, great dancing, good to be DONE!

I know I don't normally show faces, but I don't
 really think this looks like Curly.  Here she is
 getting her makeup on before she danced.  Least
favorite thing in dancing is the
 wig/makeup component.

In the middle of the night before Curly was going to dance, I woke up to pee.  Thanks goodness I looked at my phone.  It was not working.  No!!!  It was giving me messages about memory issues.  I worried that the alarm for the next morning would not function.  I sat in the bathroom for the next few hours deleting photos and text messages and rebooting the phone to try to reassure myself that it was going to function. 

Because there is a God, Curly’s competition was not the first competition of the day.  There would be no 4 am wig and makeup appointment.  Still, I needed to get some sleep and I could not believe that my phone was acting up at this particular moment.  

The next day all ran smoothly.  Curly danced her hard shoes well, but was not going to be at the top of the pack.  She has excellent foot placement but seems to hold something back rather than pounding the snot out of the floor.  She still places well because her timing is excellent, her steps are advanced, and her mechanics are spot on. 

I told her she danced great, but I wished she could have infused a bit more attack in her steps.  Soft shoes are a different story.  There is a panel of 6 judges.  One of the judges ranked her in the top 5 (out of over 100 girls, these scores we do not see until the day is done).  Her soft shoes made me weep - just beautiful!  After points are tallied from the first two rounds, the top half of the girls earns a recall.  Curly recalled, and danced once more.  Before we headed back to our hotel to eat dinner and chill out until we needed to return for the awards ceremony, we left some of our coats and things on a few chairs to save us some seats. 

We decided not to hang out at the hotel too long, because we didn’t want anyone to mess with the stuff that we left to save our seats.  We were in high spirits, because Curly was done dancing and she had done a great job.  Now we just needed to wait and see what the judges thought.  Across from the hotel we stopped and got our customary, celebratory ice cream at McDonald's.  A few steps outside the McD’s, Mini let out a shriek.  ‘The dress!’  

We had left the dress in the hotel room.  An Irish dancing dress is not the kind of item that one leaves behind to save a seat, so we hauled it all the way back to the room and then we forgot to bring it back with us.  Curly only wears the dress to dance and strips it off moments later.  We lug it around with us all day.  There is no ice cream eating in the dress, etc.  

I told the girls not to worry.  I would go back and grab the dress and then I would jog back to the venue.  We had plenty of time before the awards would begin.  I ordered the girls to get to our seats and I would see them there.

This was a no brainer - much easier to recover from than a bag left in a cab like my snafu at last year's National Champs.