Final week

You know when you get close to your weather app being able to predict the forecast during your event that your event is CLOSE. Here we are with just one (full) week left and one weekend before we pack up the truck on Wednesday and head out. 

I think this time for me is similar to those final weeks of pregnancy where thoughts of the birth are so constant and overwhelming that it’s truly exhausting being in your brain and you want nothing more than it being over so you can think about something else for a change. I can’t wait to start plotting out my fall garden, getting back to the desert, finalizing our Christmas break road trip, things like that. Right now I’m so inundated with event thoughts that I swear I can smell the hotel in my nostrils every day when I wake up. This of course leads to unwanted random shoots of adrenaline which then lead to diarrhea which then leads to inflamed hemorrhoids. Good times.

Last week on Monday morning I was made aware of an anonymous Reddit post accusing one of my volunteers of sexual assault (not at my event and not naming my event, but she - yes, she - works at a local dance studio). Unfortunately my safe spaces person who is tasked with investigating these things for both me and the studio has a personal beef against the person being accused, so it was a messy week of multiple messenger groups talking about this and not loving how she was handling it, and thereby constant interruptions. At the exact same time I became the subject of a bizarre series of harassing emails, which after ANOTHER investigation we determined to be from a guy I had banned. Could both be from the same person? Possibly, but we’ll probably never know for sure. We had to just drop the Reddit post investigation since all leads led nowhere, which also means nothing could be proven, which means I invited the accused person to stay on the volunteer staff, which several people were unhappy about and let me know how unhappy they were. This is my life now. All I can say is, something fucked up happens every year, and if this is it and we got it out of our system before the event even starts, then, great.

The boys got through their first full week of school - Bobby seems not thrilled with it all; he has retreated into himself a great deal and barely talks to us (normal?) but Theo is quite the chatterbox who loves to tell me every detail of everything that happened every day. I’m glad he chose horticulture as his elective - hopefully he can teach me some skills since I’m out here trying to learn from Facebook reels.

It is late August. Everything is dry as hell and it is relentlessly hot. Yesterday I got a $1000 bill for water & power - twice what it was this spring - no doubt from the double whammy of running the AC constantly and watering my surviving plants. But everything is also mostly fixed - my garage wall repair is completed and somehow paid for, I have my car back, the desert cameras are back after a reboot (they were inconsistently on or off for weeks), and our pool valves have been repaired (although we’ll need a new pump soon). 

This week I have a lot of appointments and meetings which is going to make it difficult to be home and do my work, which stresses me out a bit, but at least I can say with confidence that at this moment things are in order, and I have one more weekend without many plans to catch up just in case I need it. 

Here’s a pic of us from a big music festival yesterday. Unfortunately I got very sick from the shitty food and extreme heat and lay on the ground for most of it, but was able to rally for LCD Soundsystem who I was mostly there to see, and they were fantastic. 

First day of 7th and 9th grade

Today was the first day of school, and we got up far too early and then had to wait around until an appropriate time to leave. I of course hardly slept at all, fearing oversleeping and also dealing with the chaos of one of my instructors asking for a bunch of stuff at 10 pm that I will have to organize. 

But for the first time I got to watch the kids walk into their jr/sr high together, and that’s what they’ll be doing for the next four years. It’ll take a while to get the rhythm of when to leave/where to drop them and pick them up. I’m all discombobulated between being in a rental car that reeks of cheap cologne and this new daily routine.

The report was Bobby said his first day was “mid”, mostly railing about increasing restrictions on screen time at school and being generally unimpressed by everything that happened, while Theo seemed pretty thrilled. I’m hoping this means the best case scenario where he really steps up and starts to shine. At least he seems happy and excited about it, and that’s a good thing. I don’t know if this is a puberty vs pre-puberty thing; we’ll see what Theo’s like in two years.

Today I had a ton of complicated work and check-in phone calls with various staff for my event, all the things I had been delaying while the kids were still at home this week. Now I really have to buckle in and tie up all the loose ends I’ve been letting hang for months. 

Here are the boys on their first morning and then at the traditional post-first day ice cream stop:

About to start

All week I was in this weird, sad nostalgia mode about the kids’ final week of camp, realizing it might be the last time we ever go there, to the point of almost being in tears at moments. What’s up with that? First of all, they may both be back next year as CITs, and Theo could be a CIT for three years. But even if they have no interest in this camp again - why does this hit so hard for me?

I think that when your kids are this age, you really feel that clock ticking down, and it’s scary. It feels like everything is just a series of lasts. The other night in yoga I suddenly had this image of the photo of them sitting in the cowboy tub in the desert and realized they’d never be that little again and found myself tearing up.

When they’re little and every day is such a struggle, you long for these easy days of parenting big kids. And I promised myself I would never forget how hard those years were and start romanticizing them, and I will keep that promise. But still - my parenting days are more than half over - 3/4, really - and I’m sad about that. 

I had to explain to a friend without kids how sad every start and end of the school year is now - it used to be a happy time, but now it’s tinged with a little sadness. I told her these milestones just mean your kids are growing up. As much as I feel I might be getting a little over the top with this stuff, I also know I’m not alone - all of us parents constantly marvel at how big our kids have gotten and how we’re dreading high school graduations. Everyone has the same fears about affording college and hoping our kids can launch into their lives and not just be 30 smoking weed and playing video games in their childhood bedrooms. These are our concerns at this age.

Last night I picked the boys up from their summer camp Disneyland field trip at 9 pm and that was the end of that - I asked them to wash their camp shirts one last time and then I’d cut them up for rags (how symbolic). We have a fairly leisurely weekend, then Theo has school orientation on Monday and we start to kick into gear - Bobby needs new giant pants, I need to sort out Theo’s too-small clothes, find school supplies around the house, clean up their room a little (if not now, when?), and make sure Theo gets the final two thirds of his summer book report done before school starts. Then school on Wednesday, and I am officially back on school schedule. As much as I’m dreading getting up early, I’m also looking forward to getting back to my old exercise classes and having an extra hour in the day to hike before it gets hot, go to my freeway protest, etc etc. 

I feel like once they’re solidly back in school I can relax a little and stop feeling all this saudades - I’m a little worried about Theo’s transition to junior high, like any parent would be, so that’s giving some anxiety too. When I feel like he’s gotten the program and doing ok I can exhale a little. We won’t have a transition like this again until college. Hopefully it’ll be smooth sailing for a while.

Final week of “summer”

There’s that “end of summer” feeling in the air, which is very incongruous in Los Angeles - for us, summer weather continues for three more months. But yet, kids are back in school in just a week, so summer is, in fact, over. We’re currently experiencing The Big Bake - once the pacific marine layer at last burns off by mid-late July, now it’s just hot, hot, hot from sun up to sun down. High eighties to triple digits or at least mid-90s every day. Personally, I like the heat, except for it makes my necessary hikes impossible, and for me is a harbinger of my event coming up, with attendant anxiety. But I love the warm evenings and smell of the baked earth. Also getting to use the pool, and actually swim in the ocean, which we did yesterday. I do love summer even though my relationship with it is complicated.

I got through my anxious week of price increases and cut-offs ok - my numbers are still lagging, of course, but people are still signing up. I know better than to hope for some last minute miracle - with my high prices and the hotel sold out, there’s not going to be some last minute rush; there never is these days - but if people continue to trickle in even at half the rate of last year, I’ll have just enough to pay everyone. Then I live off of the weekend ticket sales, and the price increase on Feb 1, and I continue to kick the can of despair down the road until next spring and summer. And we may be living in a very different world by then, with the midterms over and the whole political landscape changed. But barring any emergencies, I’ll survive this year. It’s sad that I’m reduced from thriving to barely surviving, but here we are. 

Last week of camp, which involves me making lunches every day, a day off for a water park trip with friends, and a field trip to Disneyland on Friday for the boys. Then next week two days at home before school starts. They both have book reports due upon starting school, a fiction and non-fiction book each. Bobby is finishing up his second report; Theo is only halfway through his second book. I’m going to have to up his reading time from 45 minutes to an hour each night just to maybe get it done in time. I realized our current schedule, apart from being an hour later in the morning, is very similar to where we’ll be when they’re in school - 1/2 hour to get ready in the morning, drop off, pick up around four, make them start homework at 5. I keep feeling like there’s this huge change coming but not really. At least getting up earlier allows for me to get back to my old exercise classes. 

The only real change this year is Theo starting middle school and having to try harder. I feel like he really coasted these last two years and I’m worried he’s going to struggle to keep up. He’s a smart kid and I know he can do it, but he’s not used to working hard, as evidenced by how long it’s taking him to get through this book. I do have a fear that he’s not going to do well. Bobby seems to naturally apply himself so I never had to worry about him much - another way we’re similar. I’m going to have to pay close attention to Theo this year to make sure he’s not slacking. I feel like if he starts off well in 7th grade that’s a good sign that he’s got the skills to continue to do well. 

Penultimate camp week

It’s the boys’ second to last week of camp, and already I’m feeling a strange nostalgia for it. All of the kids at the camp are so little - they follow giant Bobby around like little ducklings - and my kids are so big. I don’t know if they’ll both want to try to be CITs there next year; it’s impossible to know what they’ll be like by next spring. I do think they enjoy having somewhere to go and getting to play with other kids, even little ones. But the day is coming when these sweet little no-frills summer camps are in the rear window, and I’m sad about that.

This also means school is coming up fast. I ordered Bobby a new backpack, Theo gets a haircut tomorrow, and I need to go through his pants to get rid of the ones that are too small that he insists on still wearing. Gone are the days of big expensive school supply lists, thank god, but I do still need to make sure I at least send them to school with some basics like pens and pencils and notebooks. Theo has an orientation two weeks from today and then they start Wednesday the 12th. I still have zero plan for how to pick them up, now that they get out together; I want them to walk somewhere away from the school so I’m not stuck in crazy school pickup traffic with nowhere to pull over, but I don’t know where that is yet. We’ll figure it out in those first weeks I’m sure. I also still want to explore them taking the bus home, but that can wait. 

This is an important and stressful week for my event. My price increase is Friday night, which means I should be getting a decent bump of people; also the refund cut off is the same day which means I’ll be getting lots of refund requests, too. I’ve already had three today and it’s not even noon. I’m simultaneously trying to re-sell canceled hotel rooms so I’m not on the hook to pay for them, and I have no idea how that’s going to go. 

Although it’s impossible to predict what’s going to happen in the next month, I do know that it’s too late to try to change what is going to happen. My numbers are dismal - I’m thinking I’m going to lose more than another 100 people, maybe even up to 200 this year, which puts me into “barely break even/lose a little money” territory, which is horrifying. It’s always possible it won’t be that dire, but if I do get a big bump of people at the end, that would be really surprising since that hasn’t happened in many years, not since before the pandemic. I’ll be ok this year only because I had a small surplus going into this year and a big tax return (although all of that will be taken up by this garage wall repair, which is currently inexplicably stalled), but by this time next year I’ll really be feeling it, especially if this trend continues. This is why I have to get a HELOC and use it for living expenses just to survive whatever this is, until or unless I can scale the event down to save money (which contractually I can’t do next year). 

The thought that always haunts me, though, is what if this whole idea is just played out? What if people are just not interested in what I have to offer, this particular brand? I can think of a million reasons why my attendance is plummeting, and I still think it’s almost entirely financial, but I also worry that it’s something else, something I can’t fix, which is that people just don’t care about this anymore and they’ve moved on, either to other newer events or away from dancing entirely. I went through a similar valley back in the early 2000s, when my numbers hovered around 550-600 for a couple of years and I was close to quitting and went into a massive depression over it. But then for no apparent reason my numbers started ticking up by 2005, 2006, and things started to look up. Will that happen again? Is this really all just Trump, and once he’s gone (or lame ducked) people will feel like spending money again? Who knows. I just know I’m in a pit right now and there’s nothing I can do to save myself and it’s really, really scary. 

Despite all this, though, I’ve mostly been able to maintain a positive attitude - I still have to put on the best damned show I can for those lovely people who are showing up, and I intend to do that, and just hope for a better future. My friends assure me that my brand is solid and this is just a blip we’re all experiencing - and they could be right, although they’re biased and just trying to cheer me up. Over the weekend I told myself to just try to be in denial - there’s nothing I can do to fix it, so why not just pretend I’m independently wealthy and running this for fun, so any dips in attendance don’t affect me personally but are just something to be observed? Sometimes this works. Denial can be powerful at times. 

Happy birthday to meee

Despite my self-proclaimed ambiguity regarding my birthday, I ended up really leaning into it this year and thoroughly enjoying it. Sometimes joy is just a choice, you know? 

I promised myself I wouldn’t do any real work just for the day - I would answer customer service emails, but no big spreadsheet marathons or lengthy tasks. Then I took a new Pilates class to make up for the one I have to miss on my summer schedule, ran home unexpectedly to move all the boxes of trophies left on the stairs into the house so they wouldn’t melt or get stolen, then headed to the local bar that does food deliveries for another run at supplying groceries for neighborhood folks afraid of deportation. I will probably just do this every Friday that I can from now on, because why not? 

The H really pulled it out this year, I have to give him credit. He sent me a beautiful bouquet, we all went to dinner at my favorite place, and he even had the kids get me cards and presents (this isn’t something we typically do - I realize I need to up my game in this area). I asked for a good knife set, and he got me that. It was a great day. Spontaneously after dinner I made everyone watch one of my favorite movies, Blood Simple. Theo wandered off after a few minutes and the H kept yawning and falling asleep - not stimulating enough for him, I think - but I think Bobby liked it.

I feel like I had more texts/messages/FB posts than usual. Considering how rarely I text people on their birthday, it was really sweet. It made me feel loved and appreciated. I guess I needed that, and I guess I put myself in the mindset to receive it, too. Earlier in the week, my bandleader asked if I wanted it noted on tonight’s gig advertisement that we’d be celebrating both our birthdays (his is the 14th) and I said I didn’t want to be a bother (making the venue re-do their artwork to include me) and he said “don’t minimize yourself. You deserve to be celebrated.” Makes me tear up a little, thinking of that. It’s weird to think that even people like me who (I think) don’t really have an issue with self-esteem still have these little moments of not being ok asking to be put forward. It might also be a woman thing, and/or a middle aged woman thing. Everything about society teaches us, even now, that young women are to be elevated and celebrated and older women just need to step aside and let other people have their moment. In some ways I agree with this - older people not stepping aside in government is a huge part of our problem in this country - but maybe on a personal level, I might need to rethink this strategy.

Midsummer

It’s my “birthday week”, but I’m ambivalent about it. I’m looking forward to celebrating on Friday (like last year, dinner at El Coyote followed by cake at home), but otherwise, I don’t feel the need to make a big deal about it. I guess these mid-life birthdays just sort of lose their magic. Honestly if the day went by with no acknowledgement - and that was normal somehow and not something I should take personally - I really wouldn’t care. 

So, at (almost) 54, here are the stats:

Still bleeding regularly. WHY.

The heaviest I’ve ever been, outside of pregnancy 

Other than my sometimes debilitating arthritic toe pain on my left foot, still able to do anything physically - lift weights, long hikes, etc. 

Not on any medications 

No real menopause stuff other than bad sleep and brittle nails (slightly)

I’m the mother of a twelve-year-old and a fourteen-year-old. I remember years ago doing the math and wondering what it would be like to be going through menopause with two boys going through puberty…but a) I’m not in menopause, and b) Theo is not going though puberty, yet. Honestly, it’s been fine. I often wonder if my life with girls would be different; you hear so much about the drama of girls at these ages. I suppose there were some ugly moments when I was at that age, but, of course, all of that was cut short when I moved in with my sister at fourteen. So I don’t really have a road map for life in an intact family as a teenager.

We had an idyllic family day yesterday, the type that I used to dream about but only got to have during the pandemic because of the H’s (until now) 24/7 work schedule. We all had a free day so I posited that we make a pool day of it, and I got out all the cushions and scrubbed the bird poop off the table and chairs while the H scrubbed the rat pee and poop off of the grill and burnt it off, as well, before cooking anything. We splashed around and hung out in the hot tub and watched the World Cup on a phone, while making steaks (for them), cherry tomato/basil/mozzarella bites, grilled corn, chips and dip and watermelon. It was such a nice time that I’m encouraged to try to do this every free Saturday - and there are a few - until summer is done. 

As Bobby’s about to start high school, college is being pushed to the forefront of my mind. There’s a lot I still have to investigate and learn about, of course, but I feel like we’re in a decent position - I’m able to save about $10,000 a year for him (I currently have $25,000 saved, and we have four, technically eight, years of savings to go); and so far he’s been a straight A student. We’re not going to be able to afford some fancy private school with room and board of course, but surely we can come up with something suitable in California’s system, even if it’s two years of cheap community college and then transfer out somewhere impressive, and living at home. I also have the fantasy of him going to a Santa Barbara-area school and living in one of the spare apartments belonging to a dance friend of mine for cheap. So many possibilities, it’s exciting. I love to think about how (hopefully) much easier these kids’ young adult lives will be than mine - working a minimum wage job and living in slums and just trying to stay afloat, wanting a future but not having the slightest idea how to get there, all my friends off at college leaving me completely isolated. You know what happens when you’re a young girl looking for guidance and comfort at that age, lost and struggling and with no support? Some predatory man steps in and takes over, which is exactly what happened to me in the form of my New School film teacher, eleven years older and incredibly toxic and controlling. 

This is the thing I couldn’t see when I was a young adult but I see now, which is that young people still need a ton of support and guidance; I think us Gen Xers were sold the line that the minute you turn eighteen you’re automatically autonomous, whereas we now know this is far from the truth. So it’s easy for us to harrumph about kids today still living at home in their twenties and not living an independent adult life while we had to suffer and struggle…but I don’t want my kids to struggle, not unnecessarily anyway. And I’m pretty sure if I’d gone to college and had friends and was studying something I was passionate about, my life would have been dramatically better. Those post-high school years were some of the worst of my life. I don’t want that for them. 

Thankfully, these kids have loving and engaged parents, and although I’m struggling financially at the moment, it’s not so bad that I can’t put money away for them. Their lives are going to be very different. And just imagine what the world could be like by 2030 - our Trump nightmare over, things looking up…? Maybe? Lindsey Graham died suddenly last night, so anything is possible.