October

I did my annual Halloween decorating today - hauling the skeleton, two pumpkin lanterns, and tub of smaller items out of the shed, and decorated the porch and mantel. As is always the thought these days, I wondered how many more times I’ll do this. Will I continue to decorate even when the kids are gone? Probably not. We never get any trick-or-treaters and nobody else on the block decorates. We’re just not in that kind of neighborhood. It’s an odd thought to think that one day in a few years I just won’t do it anymore, and nobody will care.

It’s a bit of a bleak post today, sorry. I leave for Northern California tomorrow after just returning from Chicago last weekend, and I’m exhausted and not looking forward to it. I’m especially dreading this weekend now because I find myself in a sticky situation - there’s a young girl I know a little bit through dancing who has taken it upon herself to call out my event for various and vague issues, mostly around the dance contests, in a series of Odyssey-length Facebook posts (which thankfully get very little traction since they’re too long), which the other night culminated in her sending me an epic email AND private message saying she wants to meet with me at the event this weekend to discuss these things. I stupidly agreed - unfortunately I can’t ignore these people - and now I wish I hadn’t. She hasn’t seen my message agreeing to meet, though, so maybe I’ll get out of it. 

I’ve been through this a thousand times - every year, when the majority of dancers don’t win the contests, they all flock to social media to air their grievances like it’s Festivus, never once entertaining the concept that maybe they just weren’t good enough to beat out the other people who danced that day. I feel like this behavior has always existed but it’s been ramping up in the last few years - it’s either a generational thing (I do think GenZ relies way too much on authority figures to curate a perfect, friction-free experience for them wherever they go); and/or the prevalence of social media means we now all have access to what used to be people just grumbling amongst themselves. And I’m used to this, and accept that my role as the leader of a Very Big Thing means I’ll always be accused and maligned and beat up on, but boy is it exhausting and infuriating at times. Now is one of those times.

There’s something, too, about this horrific Cornell university story (as an example of how we progressives seem to have accomplished absolutely nothing over the last fifty years if things like this still happen and are still not dealt with appropriately), balanced against the extreme left currents that I constantly have to navigate in running my event, that make me just feel utterly hopeless. Nobody can just be kind and reasonable. Everything has to be so all or nothing, black and white. It’s very culty, and I find it all very triggering. Also I just finished a novel which touched on Pinochet’s brutal military coup in Chile and I’m just triggered all over the place.

And yet I have to face my community for the first time when I go DJ tonight, and then get up bright and early to go sing all weekend in a depressing foggy meth-ruined Northern California small town, in which I will have to pin a wig to my head and slather my face with makeup and ruin my arthritic toe in uncomfortable shoes that are supposed to be good for my toe but aren’t, and be kind and gracious and remember lyrics and try to make small talk with people I barely know. And I must rally whatever ounce of energy I have left to do this, because I’m a goddamned professional and the show must go on no matter what I’m feeling. Also, I know I can come home and collapse because at last my endless marathon of duties are over and I can finally just hermit for a while. Coming up is cooler temps, our first visit back to the cabin, the holiday trifecta (I finally booked a winter break road trip to Sedona in the hopes of bypassing any possible snow anywhere north), the mid terms, all sorts of relief-providing things. I love fall. 

The fog settles

Unsurprisingly I’m still in a bit of a fog, still feeling unmoored and distracted. Is it like this every year? Perhaps. A year is too far for the human brain to contextualize. Everyone forgets how hot or cold it gets; everyone forgets what happened last Christmas. I do recall feeling like I’m not really recovered from the event until about mid-October, so odds are whatever I’m going through mentally is normal. 

Still no sign of the final hotel bill, so although I have a glimpse of what I’m facing, I don’t know for sure. The money situation seems to be ok but not great. Being the overachiever I am, I had hoped I’d be a bit better off than last year, but I think actually I’ll be a bit worse off. I keep forgetting that I did in fact lose 80 people and the event was a lot more expensive, so there’s literally no way I could have ended up with more money. I’m lucky I could even pay for it, honestly. But my bills are covered. That’s all that matters. 

Despite having tweaked my back during the move back from the hotel and been in mild to excruciating pain ever since, I was able to do all of my exercise classes this week and jump back in to at least some of my volunteering (I won’t be able to do any Friday food distribution for two more weeks, sadly). Slowly things are getting back to normal - although all of that is about to change; I leave for Chicago on Thursday, then the following week am in Northern California the weekend after. Maybe some travel will be just what the doctor ordered, however. I haven’t been anywhere since Hawaii in June and am feeling extremely restless. The weather in the desert is absolutely perfect right now but much to my chagrin because of all these trips we can’t go for another month. I need to try to keep this particular weekend open in the future for a desert trip (we have a concert tonight). 

Yesterday the kids had a minimum day so I took them to in n out for lunch and asked them to grade their 7th and 9th grade experiences so far. Theo gave his an 89.5 and Bobby gave his a 75. Bobby does not like his English or Spanish classes; both kids like their math and science classes. These kids are so the opposite of me. I tried to talk to them about colleges or future career aspirations but they’re just not there yet. It’s so odd because I was so future and career driven at their age - part of that may have been that my home life and childhood were so unenjoyable; part of it may have just been that I was a girl. I feel like so many (not all, of course) of my friends have girls that are highly motivated and active and involved in things, whereas all their boys are just home playing video games like mine. Is this normal? Should I be worried? I worry constantly whether I actually should or not. I figure it’s a year or two before I really need to focus on Bobby’s college ambitions or adult future; but being me I feel like I always need to be one step ahead. I attended a college prep zoom put on by the school last night but it was an hour of useless information. Sigh. 

In general feeling pretty good about things politically, pretty optimistic. MAGA appears to be in its long overdue death throes; I’m hopeful for the mid terms. That’s going to be one hell of a nail biter of a night. I’m literally counting the days. 

Post-con

I’m alive!! And I just had the kids carry all the boxes and crap out to the shed, which marks the official end of the event. I only have a few more payments left, and tackling the always insane hotel bill, but other than that I’m mostly done.

How did it go? It went well. I have to say it was probably the most incident-free; no problematic men to throw out, no major racial incidents unlike last year. The worst thing that happened was I got sick and lost my voice; couldn’t sing on Sunday night and could barely talk on the final two days, but all things considered I’ll happily take that over what happened last year. 

Financially it’s hard to say; there’s so much money still coming and going, and I don’t know where I’m going to land with the hotel bill. I’m tempted to say I’ll be about where I was last year. We’ll see in about a month when everything is cleared and paid and I can compare where I am to where I was last year at the same time. Obviously I made it through the whole year last year without borrowing ahead - even had enough to cover a $25,000 garage wall repair without going into debt - so I can manage another year like that. I think curbing our travel budget and other things like extravagant birthday parties and sleepaway camps really helps. It sucks not having extra, but right now I’m just glad to be surviving. 

The whole feel of the camp made me hopeful for the future, too - I don’t think I need to worry about this event fading away any time soon. There’s so much good will and joy around it; it’s something people depend on. I don’t think I’m going to lose more people next year. I think I’m either going to level out around 900 and stay there for a while or start gaining people back. I only lost 80 people from last year which is less than I’d anticipated. And the price increases helped stave off big losses. So I’m ok.

It was exhausting having to jump right into getting up at 7 to get kids to school all week - today was the first day I got to really sleep. Still fighting off whatever this lurgey is - I tested for covid and came up negative, so I think it’s just a nasty head cold. 

This year the kids were more on their own than ever - the H made a bunch of complicated projects for himself so wasn’t there to supervise them. Thankfully they played with some other Lindy hop kids that they see every year. I had told them that they’re going to have to take a little agency and get themselves down to the food room alone and grab a plate. I don’t know if they ever did this; I also don’t know if they ever brushed their teeth or put on sunscreen when they went to the pool. I guess this is the one time I get to experience hands-off 70s and 80s parenting wherein I don’t know where the kids are or what they’re doing. It’s weird, but I’m too busy to be concerned about it. 

It’s odd to think of a time, not too far off, when they won’t need to be driven home to go to school anymore or be picked up as we’re unloading the truck or, god forbid, not even come to the event at all because they’ve got their own stuff going on. That’s a profoundly bizarre thought but is pretty likely to happen - the day may come in just a few years where they really have nothing to do with it at all. I wish they had some interest in all this stuff, but they just don’t. Oh well! They want to make their own way in the world. I respect that. 

For now I’m too in the weeds of event wrap-up to even think about what’s next - visiting the cabin, our Christmas road trip, my fall garden - but hopefully in a week or two the fog will clear. I went on a bit of a spending spree buying soft goth clothes from companies with names like Vampire Freaks and Disturbia to plot out my fall identity. Next week I return to my exercise classes and volunteering efforts. I’m going to lean in heavy to activism now that the midterms are just weeks away. All hands on deck!!

Time management

Shockingly, I think I’ve somehow been able to manage my time a little too well, because just a few days shy of my event I’m bored and have nothing to do. And while I’m sure the next two days will involve all the chaotic people flying in with their last minute problems I have to solve, for the most part it’s pretty quiet. 

I left this weekend wide open so we could have some family time - go to the beach, or spend the day in the pool - but the H has to work all weekend, and I wasn’t up to tackling a beach trip all by myself, and our pool is broken, so of course we all just malingered around the house all day, me with a hot laptop on my lap answering the occasional email and desperately going over my to do list to see if I forgot anything. So it’s been a hot, boring weekend in which I’m both overstimulated with cyclical thoughts about all the things I need to remember and understimulated with lack of activity. And of course with triple digit temperatures I can’t get out and hike, either. What I should have done is headed over to the Y and hit the treadmill, but I didn’t think of that since I’ve only taken classes there for years. I need to remind myself that when it’s too hot to walk I really need to go there and get some exercise anyway. 

Speaking of overstimulated, so I made a frightening discovery when I went to the podiatrist to get my annual cortisone shot - according to my blood pressure readings, which they did multiple times and before and after the appointment, I am in stage 2 hypertension. They couldn’t get a reading under about 148/85 no matter what tricks we did, and the concerned nurse asked if I wanted to make an appointment about it. At first I thought it had to be just general event stress - after all, I do operate at a higher level of stress for the entire month of August - but either way it’s scary. I bought a home cuff monitor like I had in pregnancy, and unfortunately despite being home and comfortable the readings were the same. I had been ticking into the 130s over the last year or so according to my doctor visit reports - and nobody ever mentioned it to me, so I didn’t worry - but now it’s just too high. Of course I did a ton of research about it, and I bet I can name the culprit, since my diet is fine and I exercise regularly - it’s menopause. I would bet that when I do see the dr she’ll start me on estrogen and it will clear right up, in addition to fixing my horrible disrupted sleep. Part of me is hoping this condition plus being overweight will get me covered for a glp 1, but I’m not sure what my coverage is. I’m sure being 10 lbs overweight isn’t helping, either. 

For now I can’t do anything about anything except just get through these final days - tonight I have my last Knott’s (hurrah), tomorrow and Tuesday I have a number of last minute tasks plus packing and making sure the kids are set to spend the weekend in the hotel, and then we’re off. As of right now I’m shy of 900 people by about 15 which I’m sure I’ll get. Which means my prediction of losing another 100 people was accurate; but right now I’m just grateful that I didn’t lose more. I’m actually pretty pleased, truth be told.

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.