First day of camp

It was a weekend. I’m soooo glad it’s behind us and I don’t have to think about it anymore. This 4th of July was like childbirth - the only way out is through. And once it’s over it’s best just to put it out of your mind. 

Friday I drove down to ICSA, the International Cultic Studies Association. I don’t know why driving to San Diego always says it will take 2 1/2 hours and yet always takes 4 hours and why I never remember this, but the delay caused me to miss about half of what I was going to participate in, and that was a huge bummer. I arrived frazzled and frustrated, but thankfully the first person I saw was my friend I was going to see, and she was equally frazzled for her own reasons, so I didn’t feel out of place. As I had suspected, the conference itself was really for clinicians - the talks I went to were very technical and over my head, and all the questions asked were “what do I do when a client says they…” or “how can I help a client who…”. Still, everyone was friendly and welcoming, and I sat in on a group talk with the organizers and felt very at home there, as it was obvious that even though most people there were therapists they were also survivors. I had a moment where I felt like these are the only people who really understand me. And that felt good.

I had a nice dinner with my friend and three other people, and the conversation was fun and interesting, and then I headed home. I can’t say I would go to this again, but the opportunity will probably never arise again, anyway, since my friend said as much as it moves every year it had never been on the west coast before. I’m glad I went, but the driving just about killed me (about seven hours in one day). Then the next day we all piled in the car for another three hour drive to Lompoc to our friends’ for the 4th. It was a long, exhausting day. I’m glad somebody took it upon themselves to have a party with like-minded people so we wouldn’t have to be surrounded by MAGAs in a high school parking lot, but the day itself was full of sadness and anxiety for me. Anxiety because of the fireworks (as always) being torture for someone like me with auditory sensitivity, and sadness for the state of things. I just wanted it to be over. And over it was.

Today was the first day in a month of getting us all out of bed and out of the house early in the morning; I am completely discombobulated and out of it, but I have to say it’s glorious to have the house to myself for the first time since mid-June. Being on a schedule is just better - I hate being off my routines, I haven’t been able to do my exercise classes, everything’s a wreck. I hope the kids like - or at least tolerate - this camp for one more summer. I worry that Bobby is going to be glued to his phone and the camp counselors will complain about it; I worry that one or both of them will come home and say they don’t want to go anymore when they have five weeks paid for. But at the same time I think they crave the structure, too - they want to be with other kids and actively play, not just sit on devices. So my guess is they’ll be ok with camp. Not sure about next summer, but thankfully I don’t have to worry about that yet. It’s weird to think of the day when summer camps will no longer be in our lives, after all these years - but that day is right around the corner. 

Feral summer

I’m getting a peek at what future summers with teenaged boys will look like. My job is to make sure they get up at some point, brush their teeth twice a day, shower occasionally, have some food, and see sunlight once in a while. Mind you, I’m being especially lax because there’s only a few more days of feral summer before their rec center camp kicks in - there’s no way I’d be like this if it were the whole summer. But still - I don’t know how to entertain kids this age, day after day, without spending a shit ton of money I don’t have. On Friday the cleaning lady came so I spent $100 on a couple of hours at a trampoline park and lunch out; it was a fun day for them, but I sure can’t do that all the time. 

Both kids have reading assignments for school so I did at least acquire all four books and have been making them get off screens for a half hour each day to read. That’s something…right?

This week I continue my old video digitizing (I’m in the process of getting all of my 2002-2010 event videos online, which will take a couple of weeks of constant work) and general event work. While my numbers are still dismal, so far I have not had a flood of refunds, and today is the last day for cheap refund fees so you’d think I’d be getting a lot of requests. I got them mostly in the beginning of the month, apparently. 2028 and 2029 hotel contracts are signed, which means the event will happen through Bobby’s senior year in high school. Crazy! What a different world we’ll be living in by then. Assuming our US institutions hold and biology does its job, Trump will be gone either by being voted out or natural causes. It’s crazy to think about since we’re so in the weeds right now; what a truly awful time. I try to think about the generation who, like my grandmother, survived the Great Depression only to be plunged into WWII - she couldn’t catch a break for about fifteen years. Since we’re going on ten years since that orange turd descended the escalator and blew up our country and the world, we’re right behind those days. 

Right now I’m entertaining myself with low key planning yet another western road trip - preferably a cheap, short one - over Christmas break since we have no plans. I’ve always wanted to go to Nevada’s Valley of Fire state park, and that’s best done not in summer. So I’m trying to arrange some hidden gems around that general area - may dip into St George, UT for a couple of hikes; but I’m also trying to avoid real winter weather, which is tough. I don’t want to be stuck in a snowstorm or driving on icy roads. I wanted to head to some remote places further north in Nevada like Cathedral Gorge state park, but it may be just too cold. Everything outside of Las Vegas, apparently, is very remote and isolated. Which I like, but not in the dead of winter. I’ll figure it out. 

I’m spending the day Friday at the International Cultic Studies Association conference in San Diego, dipping my toe back into that world for a minute. This conference is held in a different country every year, and with it being so close this year, made me think I need to go check it out even if just for the day. I imagine it’ll mostly be pretty clinical and over my head, but hey, it’ll make a nice day trip if nothing else. Then for the 4th our friends are again hosting a “gathering” of like-minded folks who don’t feel like celebrating but want to do something. I cannot believe this is where our country is at on its 250th birthday. It’s so fucking depressing I can hardly stand it. 

Oahu

We returned from a week on Oahu late Sunday night and have been a hot mess ever since. Mainly, our sleep is all dysregulated - I keep canceling things I was supposed to do before noon, and our mealtimes are all over the place. Yesterday Bobby slept in until 1:30. So, he’s basically me at fourteen.

Our trip was good, but not without a few stressful snafus - due to World Cup traffic, we barely made it to the airport on time when we left LA, then when we arrived and were just getting into our Turo car, the H realized in a panic that he’d left his phone somewhere and insisted on driving us all out of the parking area to a loading zone and leaving me and Theo there while he used Bobby and his “find my” feature to run all around the airport trying to find his phone - this would have been stressful enough, but he left me in a Nissan Rogue which has a completely incomprehensible gear shift - it might as well have been a manual stick shift. So of course when the security officer came by seconds later and said we had to move the car, I spent probably fifteen minutes while he was glaring at me trying to figure out how to move up the seat and how to get the car out of park, then didn’t know where to go or what to do so I just pulled into a parking garage where I got stuck not being able to reverse the car for another fifteen minutes until I finally figured it out. Mind you this was well after midnight (3 AM our time); I was exhausted and starving and had already had a few stressful incidents that day, and was furious with him for once again leaving his phone somewhere (he’s done this several times - thank you, adhd) and then panicking and abandoning me in a dangerous situation in a car I can’t drive (which he could barely drive, either, so he knew it was problematic). It was well over an hour before the phone was found on the plane and brought out; by then he was relieved and laughing it off but I was seething. This was the beginning of our vacation. It didn’t bode well. I let him have it, and he saw how serious this was to me and apologized for putting us in that situation. And then I had to just get past it. Ah, marriage.

Thankfully the trip looked up after that and there were no more disasters. There was snorkeling and swimming and hiking Diamond Head and an emotional visit to Pearl Harbor. All the things I hadn’t done there yet. I wouldn’t stay in Waikiki again, but we did it once, mainly because it was all my points could afford. I split it with two nights on the north shore which was a lot nicer. Tons of traffic and parking issues which isn’t what you want on a Hawaiian vacation, but hey, it’s overrun by tourists and we’re part of the problem. 

I’ve come home convinced I look fat in all the pictures and I MUST lose weight before my event in two months. We’ll see how long my resolve lasts this time. So far getting up late as hell the last three days and only having a couple of low calorie meals a day has been helpful. 

It’s weird front-loading the summer with a trip right away; I can’t believe we’re back and yet have the whole summer ahead of us with not even so much as a weekend away for at least three months. I sure do miss the cabin already. Temps in the desert are high 90s to low 100s. 

We have two feral weeks before the kids start summer camp - this one and the next. I’m struggling to think of lunch foods and how to get them out of the house. I’ve been working on event stuff round the clock since we got back and am only just now coming up for air; everything hit when I returned and requires a lot of time and focus. The hotel sent me contracts for 2028 and 2029 to review, and so far they look fair. It’s good to know they still want me and that I still have a future there, assuming my attendance doesn’t completely collapse by then. Will it turn around once Trump is gone and people feel more optimistic about their finances? Perhaps. Right now I’m on track to lose another 100 people, although it could get even worse and I just don’t know it yet. It’s a terrible reality to have to live with. I just keep telling myself that somehow it’ll all work out even if it means a few years of austerity. At least the house is paid for.

Theo graduates 6th grade

Theo graduated from 6th grade today in a nice ceremony at school, which officially ends our elementary school experience which began in 2017 when Bobby started kindergarten. What a long, strange trip it’s been!

As always, I have mixed feelings about it all - part of me is done with the little kid stuff and ready to move on to the next phase, and with Bobby two years ahead I know exactly what that will look like. But I couldn’t help but look a little longingly at the parents at graduation cradling newborns or corralling littler kids - all of that is in the rear view mirror for me now; it’s hard not to get a little misty about it. Any ideas I had about getting really involved in their elementary schools and really bonding with the other parents is over - things went down the way they did, and that’s it. I stood a chance at their old school, but then Covid ruined that momentum and we never really recovered. 

Theo got a citizenship award (no doubt for being a kinder helper all year) and the presidential silver award (with our loathsome president’s sociopathic signature on it - I thought about blacking it out, but then thought it might make an interesting historical artifact some day). Bobby played hooky from his last day of school to be there, and of his own volition chose to dress up. Now we’re home sorting through Theo’s leftover supplies and artwork, then we’ll go for lunch and end of school ice cream later. I asked Bobby if he would still get ice cream on the day he gets his Masters and he said yes. 

We’ve got a few days to prepare for Hawaii and then we leave on Monday. I’m looking forward to having this time off from the daily grind, especially dragging myself and everyone else out of bed (to be fair, Theo’s always up because he’s a morning person, but Bobby and I hate it). The kids don’t start their summer camp until after 4th of July, so we have a nice long break before we have to be on a schedule again.

On to High School

Bobby graduated from 8th grade on Thursday. There were no caps and gowns and no diplomas, but a nice walking ceremony and some acknowledgments. Bobby got High Honors, Perfect Attendance, and Service in Action. I had him wear his black pants and shirt from homecoming, and I’m glad I did, since almost all the kids were dressed up. This is a funny age, since there’s such a discrepancy between the kids who have gone through puberty and those who haven’t. Some of the boys looked about nine years old; others could have been eighteen. Bobby is right on target, I think. 

We all got up early and went to wait on line, then the H left after Bobby walked, and I thought went to work - then I get a notice that our front door is open and our alarm has been tripped. I can’t check my ring camera because I just happen to be charging the battery; I have about twenty minutes of sheer panic as I’m trying to get a hold of neighbors to go check it out, and then the H calls to tell me he went home frantically to pee and couldn’t remember our alarm code. Why he didn’t call me the minute this happened, I don’t know, but at least our house wasn’t being ransacked as our 8th grader was graduating. It took a good hour for the adrenaline to leave my system enough for my hands to stop shaking. 

Bobby came home after graduation, but I did make him go to school the next day. He told me they did nothing but play hacky sack and hang out on their phones; and they have three more days of this. Grades are in so nobody’s teaching anything, they’re just being baby sat until they reach the required 180 days of school. Theo graduates Wednesday and Bobby wants to go, so I’ll let him play hooky that day being as it’s the last day of school so nobody cares. That means two half days and then an early morning graduation and then we’re done. 

My sister is visiting and we took a hike up by the boys’ old school. I could see the graduation getting underway there…I still have moments of wishing I had just let both kids stay there through 6th grade as originally planned. But I know I need to get over that because the kids are fine - they don’t regret the move, and it all worked out. I guess I feel guilty/bad that I’m so disconnected from their current schools and never made an effort to connect with any of the parents. There’s still time, of course. But I feel like I’ve failed in that department. I have my dance community and those are all the friends I need, really. But it would be nice to be connected to other parents. 

Closing out for the season

It’s odd to close out a vacation home for the summer…at the beginning of summer. But it honestly makes sense for my life schedule - 90% of my work is in the summer, between my event and singing at Knott’s every weekend. So summer is not relax time for me, it’s work time. I hate it, but hey, at least we get a nice summer trip in there somewhere. We leave for Hawaii in two weeks. 

It was hard to be in the desert this weekend knowing we won’t be out there again until September or possibly October if that weekend after my event is too hot or I get a gig or something. I couldn’t help escaping the constant thought that soooo much will be different by September, in ways I can’t even conceive right now. First, the California governor and mayor races will be more honed (primaries are Tuesday and both races are contentious and stressful); we’ll be just two months shy of the mid terms, and personally, I’ll know what happened at my event. The uncertainty of the moment is almost unbearable. I keep compulsively checking my turnout against last year, but at three months out, I’m still behind so there’s no way I’m not losing more people. As always, the question is, just how bad is it going to be? And, more importantly, how far is this going to go? Is this going to turn around when the economy turns around, or are big splashy dance events like this becoming dinosaurs? Boy do I wish this was happening ten years from now and not right now. This event still has to be successful for sixteen more years if I’m going to survive. Right now that’s not looking so great. Which a couple of years ago was a thought that wouldn’t even have crossed my mind. How do we survive the one-two punch of COVID followed by Trump? I honestly don’t know. Just try to survive. That’s my motto.

This week starts the graduation extravaganza - Bobby graduates Thursday, Theo the following Wednesday, with a confusing collection of half days and pot lucks and activities for the remaining eight days of school. My sister comes into town Tuesday, and I finally get to get my will paperwork together and signed and notarized. I also have an engineer coming over to assess the collapsing garage, and a mortgage guy working on my HELOC to hopefully pay for the garage and provide a buffer against economic issues for the next few years. 

This weekend we had a nice small town vibe of visiting the local public pool (would be a lot more fun if it wasn’t always freezing cold) followed by the new (lame) Star Wars movie at the old timey drive in. Then I stripped the beds, packed up the old food and anything that could melt in 120° heat, and we left. Boy, am I dying to know what our lives will be like when we return. Everything is happening so fast these days, you can live a whole lifetime in just a day. 

Grad night

Bobby is currently on a bus headed up to Six Flags for 8th grade grad night. Around midnight I’ll make the trek over to school to pick him up. Then one more short week, a couple of days, and he graduates from junior high. Sunrise, sunset.

I remember my end of middle school very well even though it was forty years ago. It was especially poignant for me because, as noted in my last entry, I was leaving my elite private performing arts school (which I got full scholarships for each year, I might add) to join an arts-leaning public high school that I’d have to take the A train to every day where I knew no one and had no idea what to expect. That summer - the summer of ‘86 - I had a cassette of Peter Gabriel’s  So with Tears for Fears’ Songs From the Big Chair on the other side which I listened to non-stop and still listen to regularly. I had recently seen American Graffiti for the first time and had become obsessed with the 50s, suddenly wearing my Salvation Army finds with much more intention. That summer we finally got a television after not having one for four years (I entertained myself by re-enacting musicals while listening to original cast albums, compulsively reading Little House on the Prairie or the CS Lewis Narnia series over and over, or making elaborate Victorian costumes for my cloth hand-made dolls), and I distinctly remember parking myself in front of the TV for the entire day all summer since there was nothing to do and nowhere to go. Sometimes I would watch Manhattan Cable’s Channel J, which featured all-nude talk shows, a guy named Ugly George who interviewed people on the street while his balls hung out of his shorts, and porn with large blue stars covering any naughty bits. Ah, the 80s in New York City.

Entering high school would be a huge culture shock. My first day of school I wore a neat skirt and blouse and ballet flats, picturing myself in American Graffiti, but soon learned this was not the way. My outfit quickly became ripped jeans, sneakers, and Jimi Hendrix t shirts. I talked to almost no one until April of that school year when an extrovert adopted me and insisted I join her for afternoon hangouts at Washington Square park, a moment that would change my life forever. I always thought moving around a lot taught me how to be adept at making friends, but lately I’ve been taking a second look at this assumption; being naturally shy and terrified of rejection, I think I actually suck at making friends but luck out when people who are good at it randomly choose to talk to me. When I think about how much I changed my speech, behavior, and appearance in that first year of high school in order to fit in and make friends, I wonder how much of that is “masking” and how much is just normal social adaptation that everyone does. The kids at Bobby’s school, from a distance, all appear to look and act exactly the same. While in the 80s I feel like it was more socially acceptable to make a statement with your appearance, I also know that even then you had to make the right statement. Turns out counter cultures can be even more restrictive and gate keep-y than culture itself.

Recently I came across the “fan theory” that the Alison character in The Breakfast Club was actually alone in detention and made up all the other characters in her mind - the stereotypical jock, princess, geek, and burnout. Mind blown! We have yet to show the kids any John Hughes movies due to the rampant sexism and racism, but I think they’re just about the age where we could show them with some guidance beforehand. 

Last night I attended an informational zoom about a 10th grade trip to Korea that Bobby has been selected for. Turns out it’s going to cost $5400. Ummm next! There’s no way we can afford that, even eighteen months away. There is a senior trip; we’ll save for that instead - maybe things will be less gnarly by 2030 (please).

Money concerns dominate my thoughts right now, as I know they do for so many Americans. My event is lagging, and even though I’m fairly confident I’ll just squeak by this year, two years in a row of losses is not good, and makes me wonder if events like this will even be feasible going forward. Am I going to be out of business by the time Bobby graduates? After thirty years, are big dance events going to end because nobody can afford them anymore? I’m terrified.

In light of this, I’ve taken it upon myself to look into taking out a HELOC on the house. There’s zero reason not to - it’s just an emergency fund in case everything goes to shit (and even if everything doesn’t go to shit, I’ll for sure need it to pay for the collapsing garage wall and maybe to supplement the kids’ college funds). I’m working with the guy who did my refi during COVID, and he’s confident with my equity and good credit that I can get a good deal. So hopefully sometime in June that’ll be in place so I can feel less panicky. Boy would it be nice to not worry about money, huh?