The penultimate week

We have two more weeks of summer schedule. I can’t tell you how much I’m dreading waking up two hours earlier and rushed mornings. But with that comes long, unbroken days to myself, no more driving to Pasadena six times a week, no more preschool fees, and no more half days three days a week. It will be just the thing when I really need to work and focus in the final weeks before my event.

Plans for the kitchen are forging ahead. The big problem at the moment is getting my electric panel and solar monitoring equipment moved from the wall that I need to break down to put in a window. This involves the DWP which, according to my electrician, moves extremely slowly. I’m pretty worried that this one thing could set us back weeks. 

I’ve decided to transform my laundry room into a satellite kitchen. If it’s going to be months, and if I insist on still cooking, then I’m going to need a real setup, not just operate out of boxes. So I’m going to clear all the shelves in there, use the utility sink, get an instant pot and a hot plate, and go to town. 

My refrigerator still won’t be fixed for nearly three weeks. I am beside myself. By the end of this ordeal I’ll have been operating out of a mini fridge in the dining room for six weeks. 

I have a question for all of you. Is anyone other than my sister actually reading this? My readership has declined sharply over the last couple of years - I figure largely because most of my blogger friends have stopped blogging at this point, and therefore nobody is reading them, either - and nobody comments anymore. I don’t intend to stop blogging - for me it’s a good creative outlet and a way to keep a record of our family life - so if I’m blogging for myself alone, that’s ok. But I am definitely curious whether I’m shouting into the void or not.

I need a vacation from my vacation

We’re baaaaack. We survived! Other than a sore and bruised chin on Theo from the night he fell off his bed and smacked his face on the tile floor, we managed to make it through a week on the Big Island without injury nor sunburn (for the most part). On the last day I got a wicked chemical burn on one side of my eye (I think I touched something and rubbed my eye) and have a cold sore from burned lips; the BF has a bad cold and a worse ear infection that has made him miserable since Saturday. But the kids are ok! 

The volcano proved to be more of a cock blocker than an attraction; we couldn’t get anywhere near it or the fissures (despite the BF’s futile attempts, which caused a huge fight), and with the volcano museums and parks closed, after a few days of beach going we ran out of things to do.

When you travel with little kids, there is a small window of things they’ll actually be interested in - being The Big Island, there was too much driving back and forth from coast to coast, and only a handful of child friendly beaches. 

With all this said, though, we did have a good time - we saw lots of sea turtles, did plenty of swimming and playing in the water, caught frogs, the kids tolerated the long drives well, and the BF and I had a nice anniversary dinner (three years!), I had a nice 46th birthday, and my sister watched the kids one night while the BF and I did a nighttime manta ray dive which was excellent.

There are soooo many things I’d do differently if I were to travel with these boys again - despite my efforts, the lack of entertainment on the plane was a major problem, airport parking was a nightmare, and I always felt frazzled and forgot things despite my above average organizational skills. Just like childbirth, you just can’t be prepared enough for travel with small children.

My sister and I got to talk about our mother’s death and were very much on the same page - we feel at peace about it, largely because we already mourned her years ago. We both hate that she died alone, bitter, and no doubt in horrendous pain - there is nothing about that that’s ok. The autopsy was a bust - apparently she was too decomposed to determine cause of death, a fact that both horrifies and depresses me. She is cremated now. My sister will go retrieve her ashes sometime in the next few weeks. We’ll gather next June in Boston to scatter her ashes in the bay as we did with my aunt and uncle. And that, as they say, is that.

I am home now to the final three weeks of our summer camp schedule, my event heating up (so much to do I don’t even know where to start), and a non-functioning refrigerator. The repairman comes tomorrow. I’m praying he can fix it - if not, the only option at this point may be to buy a cheap used one to tide us over until it’s time to buy a new one for the new kitchen this fall. Austerity measures for the months we’ll have no kitchen have begun - I’ve bought a microwave scrambled egg cooker. The horror. 

I need a vacation

Handling my mother’s affairs in Brazil is proving to be complex - my poor sister has taken on this task, which is a full time job at the moment, and god bless her for it. As I had suspected, it’s not so easy to have a body cremated, shipped abroad, and her things protected until they can be looked over. As far as we know, no notes, will, or instructions were left for anyone. I’m sure she died a pauper. I’m very curious about the autopsy report - my guess is cancer and/or kidney failure from a long term untreated infection. And so it goes.

In “you still have to pick up your dry cleaning” news, we had a bit of a household crisis around here this week. In the middle of an intense heat wave (112 degrees last Friday and about 100 for several days after), my almost new refrigerator died. By almost new I mean three years old, so out of warranty. And because the digital temperature readouts said the fridge and freezer were the right temperature, when things slowly started melting I thought I was just imagining it or that the fridge couldn’t keep up with the intense heat. So by the time I knew something was really wrong most things were beyond saving. I spent a rage-filled day Tuesday stuck at home with a recalcitrant four year old waiting for repair men - the first guy said it was beyond his scope (thanks a lot); the second guy after two hours said it was probably the compressor which is thousands of dollars but should by law still be warrantied by the manufacturer for at least five years so I should really call them. I paid $75 for this information. The Sears guy can’t come until the 26th. So I spent the whole day frantically researching new fridges only to see none could be delivered until next week (why is that???), then looked into renting a fridge, also none which could be delivered until next week. Finally the BF tracked down a used mini fridge that could be delivered; it arrived yesterday, and I crammed what few remaining items could be salvaged from our hot fridge and the leaking 1950s cooler I’d been using for the more sensitive items. Now, we wait. 

Part of the complication is, if I do have to buy a new fridge, I can only buy a counter depth one because of my tiny 1906 kitchen doorway, which limits my choices to about 5% of available fridges and raises the price about $1500. If I can hold out until the kitchen renovation begins in Sept, I can get any damned fridge I want. Well, my hope is this fridge can be fixed for free. I mean, I spent $3500 on this in 2015. Why on earth should I have to pay to replace the compressor three years later?!?

That and the price increase for my event have been the big news this week. It started off horribly when I woke up to see that the guy who programmed the price increase on the online registration accidentally set the prices back $55 to an early bird price, and a day earlier than the increase was supposed to happen. Thank God I wake up early now and am hyper vigilant enough that I just happened to check this and was able to get it fixed before I lost too much money. I mean, come on, people!

The rest of the day went smoothly, however. I was on hand to answer questions and fix people’s mistakes for them, and with no paperwork this year it was a breeze. 

I have just slightly more people than I did this time last year. Which is really terrific considering that this should, as the 21st year, be “off”. 

One thing I can’t figure out, though, is why I have so much less money if I have the same amount of people paying the same prices. I’m consistently about $30,000 down from last year. Why? I don’t think anything nefarious is going on - and it’s possible it can all be explained away by paying more things up front this year than last. Plus just living more expensively, period. But. I’m a bit worried. It shouldn’t impact my kitchen plans since that money is already put aside, but if I get to September and still have way less money I’m going to have to really look over everything with a fine tooth comb. I should be just as flush as last year, but I’m not. 

Thankfully we leave for Hawaii on Sunday. Between the mother’s death, money woes and all these petty annoyances, I can’t tell you how much I need this. 

You still have to pick up your drycleaning

My sister called early this morning to tell me they found my mother. They think she died Thursday.

So it is upon us. And so far...I actually feel ok. I don’t see some big debilitating breakdown in my future. I already had that when our relationship first broke twelve years ago - and have been having mini-episodes of it ever since, up until the first news a month ago that she may be in her last stages. There is relief there - not that I’m happy this happened; it’s a tragedy all around - but knowing that “it” is over; her story ends here. I don’t have to do anything anymore. The door is closed. There is freedom in that.

Whenever I think I need a good cry the thought comes to me, “I’ve cried enough tears for her.” I don’t think I’ve cried more over another person in my life. I’ve been grieving the loss of her for years - decades, even. How is this any different?

She lives on in us, anyway - I have her voice, her humor, her mannerisms, her artistic sensibilities. If ever there were a more powerful argument for having children, this is it - she definitely has attained some semblance of immortality through us: me, my sister, and the boys, who unknowingly carry her legacy. They will know her full story and all it’s ugliness some day...but not yet.

A couple of years ago randomly in the car Bobby asked how old my mother was, and I told him, and he said, “I guess she’ll probably die soon.” I said yes. He asked if I would be sad, and I said yes. I don’t want them to know about this - Bobby will definitely go to, “but that means you’re going to die!” and I don’t want him worrying about that. I intend to live a good long while. My mother died at 76; her mother died at 77. I hope to outlive both of them by a good stretch. 

In the end...life must go on. These boys have their whole lives in front of them and I do not have the luxury of checking out either mentally or physically. My sister and I had a joke about our former religion - with all its carrying on about material life being an illusion and only God and Spirit being real...my answer is, “yeah...that’s great and all, but you still have to pick up your dry cleaning.” Nothing absolves us of the every day tasks of being a human, illusion or no - cooking, wiping counters, laundry, putting gas in the car, picking up groceries, going to the bank, filing taxes. I can be sad and wish things were different all I want, I can moon over sad Morrissey songs, I can wonder “what if?”...but I still have to pick up my dry cleaning. 

The fourth

The Fourth of July is such a tricky thing since the Orange Menace took office. Had it been me on my own I probably would have just worn a black armband all day and otherwise ignored it, posting virtue-signaling protest selfies on FB all day. And reading the letters from the new civil war twitter feed, which is brilliant.

But I have kids. So instead we went to an old timey festival in El Segundo during the day and then went to the fireworks and Go Go’s concert at the Hollywood Bowl. Bobby was all in - Theo, not so much. But being as Bobby went there to see Kraftwerk as his first concert a couple of years ago, he’s kind of an old hand. 

I am torn between not wanting the right wing nut jobs to co-opt our flag and traditions and patriotism and just saying fuck it and letting them have it. I am torn between wanting to move all of us to Canada before the US becomes a totalitarian theocracy and wanting to stick it out and fight. And I also realize this country that I thought stood for peace and freedom is actually built on the backs of slaves and stolen from native people. What, exactly, do you do with that???

You dress in red white and blue and stuff your feelings with ice cream because you have kids and you want them to have a nice childhood. 

Some day they will know about the Trail of Tears and the atrocities of slave culture and all of the other terrible, brutal things that made the US what it is today. But right now all they care about is Batman and swimming and ice cream. They are innocent, and that is precious. I’ll miss it when that innocence is gone.