Hippity hop

It's hard to believe I am one week shy of my next band trip - this one being the farthest we've ever gone (Seoul). This will be the case pretty much all year except for August and December; always three weeks away from another trip. Not complaining. It sure does break up the monotony and give you something to look forward to.

I have decided to jump ahead and do my laundry room/powder room conversion. Having one more toilet in this house is increasingly becoming more urgent, and I figure I have the money now so I'd better do it now. I'm not thrilled at 2-4 weeks more of construction around here, but when that's done the two remaining untouched areas of the house will be all new and fabulous; my much outdated and useless office/junk room will be the new laundry room (with a small table to rest my printer and wireless router on) and the current filthy service porch will be a quaint powder room. A couple of days ago I went to a salvage yard and bought a 1950's blue sink and toilet. Fingers crossed I can find the parts for them. Here I am doing my usual "making everything difficult so I can have vintage things" deal. Have I mentioned my first car was a 1962 Falcon that broke down constantly? Enough said.

Today is the second of Bobby's "hippity hop" classes. So far he's learned to jump with his feet apart and his feet together. All righty then.

A sort of homecoming

I am back from the first of eight trips this year. It went well. 

I had a lot of anxiety all weekend, and was starting to beat myself up about it, until I remembered my circumstances - leaving two small children behind, but also having to learn several new songs in just a matter of days and with only one run through before performing them live in front of a very sophisticated and discerning audience - well, that would make any rational person anxious.

So, unsure of how I would sound, I took to my usual tactic of "I may not sound right but I can at least look right". So, if you will permit me, here are my looks for our three performances:

Friday night, after flying all day, performing 1-4 AM

Headlining Saturday night

...and finally Sunday night, the dress I lost weight for. 

I got to have good quality time with my bandleader, much needed, and even met with a local SMBC and blog reader (hi!).

The BF spent the weekend running the kids ragged with the babysitter and sent me videos every day which I watched obsessively. 

I came home to a bit of a chaotic mess - the BF had left the hot tub heater on, which meant that when pool mode kicked in each day, the pool heated up, to a balmy 96 degrees. The pool was also running continuously all weekend (supposed to be just a few hours a day). Both of those things are going to cost a fucking fortune when my gas and electric bills come up this month. Also my back yard shed door was swinging wide open, which is never a good thing. The house was a bit of a mess, even though the sitter is really good about washing dishes, emptying garbage, etc - I walked in at 9 pm and the kids were running around and she was cleaning up and talking a mile a minute and Bobby pushed Theo off a chair and the BF barked at him to apologize and the pool was running and ughhhh...I just wanted to get back on the plane!

Ain't no happiness nowhere.

Things were looking up until this morning when a giant waterbug crawled up my arm in the bathroom. I screamed like a lunatic and then had the fun of trying to kill & dispose of it. I have seen way too many of those fucking things in the last year and that is totally unacceptable. I spent tonight clogging every hole in the bathroom with spackle. Please tell me this will keep those bastards in the walls where they belong.

Now I try to focus back on normal life for two weeks until it's time to leave for Korea. Well, heck, since the pool's already heated up I may just jump in tomorrow. Fuck it.

Baby steps

Two more days until my trip to DC to sing at a big event all weekend. I leave Friday morning and get back late Monday night. As much as I'm looking forward to it, I am also feeling guilty and anxious. What if there's an earthquake? What if the babysitter gets in a car accident? What if the kids get sick? What if they hate me for leaving them?

Well, I signed Bobby up for some bullshit hip hop "enrichment" class at school which should totally make up for my callous abandonment, right???

I have to learn several new songs (some I've never even heard before) which I will have to perform with no rehearsal. And my bandleader hasn't even told me which ones yet. Have I mentioned I'm a little anxious?

Anyway, things have been good around the house. It's amazing how smoothly things go when nobody's sick. Knock wood. Yesterday when I went to pick up B there were whispers of a Hand, Foot and Mouth disease outbreak circulating at the school. Oh, goodie. 

Things going good with the BF. His smoking cessation stalled a bit when his vaporizer started leaking and he stopped using it, but now it's fixed and he's back on it, although he hates it. A friend with a similar lifetime smoking addiction posted on FB that he had finally quit with the help of a low dose of Wellbutrin. I had never heard of this therapy before but it sounds very promising - I love it when drugs turn out to have bizarre other uses, like the cancer drug that helped me get pregnant (Femara). Of course, to get a prescription of Wellbutrin, he has to first get health insurance, which at the moment is totally out of reach. *sigh*. Baby steps.

Food Inc

Here is a picture of my four-year-old eating vegetables. It's a Festivus miracle.

I always thought I would be the kind of mother who's kids would be great eaters - adventurous, open, copious. Yeah, no. My kids eat like five things. Mostly because I make them like five things. Mostly because when I put out the effort to create thoughtful, balanced meals of new foods, they are roundly rejected. I know this doesn't matter and you need to keep trying. But night after night of that, throwing your creations down the garbage disposal while your children go to bed hungry (and the older one is so thin he can still wear 2T pants, just as capris) is just too much. So I fall back on the hits. Egg sandwiches. Soy sausages wrapped In tortillas with cheese. Quesadillas. In other words, nothing healthy. At all. It sucks, and I don't know what to do other than to keep introducing new things and throwing them down the garbage disposal untouched.

I can see why our parents made us sit at the table until our plates were clean. I guarantee you if I tried this tactic, however, that Bobby would win. Oh, he would win.

In other news, both kiddos on the mend and back in school this week so I've been getting a lot done. I am preparing to dj a swing dance tomorrow for the first time from my computer and not CDs (God help me) and am prepping for my trip to DC weekend after this one.

I am a bit worried about all my upcoming travel. I have a weekend away just about every three weeks until my event in Sept. I'm happy to do it but am worried how the kids will handle it now that they're older. Fingers crossed it'll be ok.