Here comes the cavalry

Much to my shock, I got an email from my bank last night that my Payroll Protection SBA loan was approved, and the funds appeared in my bank account today. I take back everything I said about government help being all lies. Except for the fact that for most people it is. I have friends who can’t get this loan because their former employees are making more on unemployment and don’t want to come back to work, and a function of this loan is you have to prove you spent it on payroll or you have to pay it back. Which is a snap for me. But yeah. This loan is not useful for most small businesses. It’s only supposed to cover two and a half months of payroll. I wonder if they’ll continue it? 

Today I did the first move towards closing my event - I contacted my business partner in the registration system to see if he could just create next year’s event now with all of this year’s data so I can delete people from there as they ask for refunds, since I imagine most people will want their registration forwarded. He has an event in January - I asked if he had any thoughts about it; he said if they can’t go live they’re going to do “an ambitious online project”. I thought of trying something like that...but I’m not a tech person, and that sounds like a huge amount of work. Honestly I don’t even know how you translate a live event with big bands and dance contests to something where everyone’s alone in their houses. Maybe some people have more vision than I do. It all just sounds depressing to me. 

Now that May has hit and our infection/death rates don’t seem to be falling, I feel more and more that there’s no way to run this event. I sense a flood of refund requests heading my way this month. I just hope my refinance money arrives in time to keep up. 

Six weeks of school left. We’re down to the final oral presentation for Theo and final google slides project for Bobby. Today I got some workbook for Theo in the mail...one will come for Bobby, too. I’m not sure what it’s all about but I think it has to do with making sure we’re preparing our kids for the next grade. I hope they have low expectations. I also hope we’re not expected to continue “distance learning” through the summer as has been hinted at. We all need a break - the kids, the parents, and the teachers. So many ideas are being thrown around - starting the school year in July but at home, or part-time at school; starting at the normal time but part-time; starting later in the year but part-time. Again, very grateful I don’t have to juggle a job with all this. No matter what happens, I’m here for it. I’m annoyed by it, but I’m here for it. 

Looking back on the last six weeks today, I’m shocked by how naive I was. In mid-March I thought the kids would be back at school in two weeks, I thought there was no way my event was in jeopardy, I thought by the summer it would be gone. Now people are talking about this dragging on for years, and I have to say, I don’t see a way around it. I’m preparing financially to not have an event this year or in 2021. If large partner dancing events are the least essential and most dangerous thing you can do, then our industry will be the absolute last one to recover, along with large music festivals and other close-contact type events (but ours are really the worst with everyone literally touching hundreds of strangers a night). Many dancers are saying they’re not going dancing until there’s a vaccine. But I wonder even if there’s a vaccine, will it be safe if it’s being so rushed through? Will everyone even get it? If so how long will it be before the general public has access? I don’t know if all of that will happen before September of 2021 - or certainly not by next spring which is when I’d have to start planning and opening up for registration. I just don’t know. 

And there’s still a chance this thing will completely disappear in the next couple of months, or there will be some good treatments. But I’m running out of time now. Just two months before I have to make a decision. I don’t see anything good happening. With so many states opening up now and even Californians getting antsy and rebelling, I see a big spike coming our way in a few weeks. At least I guess that will make my way more clear than it is now. 

In other news, Bobby lost a tooth for the first time in ages today. Theo has not lost one yet. It’s funny to think of baby-faced Theo with big adult teeth in his mouth. I set an alarm so I wouldn’t forget to play tooth fairy, and shortly after midnight tiptoed to my long untouched purse, found I had no dollar bills because I haven’t bought anything since early March, and scrounged together some quarters instead.