Final week

One more week of school, one more week of school! This is the song I’ve been singing (changing up the countdown as appropriate) for weeks now. Everything is slowing. The kids don’t have much asynchronous work after school anymore; they are turning in books, the parking is getting easier in the morning as more parents jump ship for early vacations, and announcements are made for final week fun plans at school. They’re going to be doing so little there it makes you wonder why even bother showing up, really. But it’s an important wind down for a terrible year, so I’ll allow it.

They got their cheap soft cover yearbooks yesterday. Most of the parents sent our at-home taken portraits back in the fall for inclusion in the book, but many did not. Seeing all the blank frames definitely made me reflect on what kind of year it was. I get the feeling many kids have left the school, either for private schools or just leaving the area. Theo promptly defaced the entire book with a red marker. Sigh.

We don’t know what return to school in August looks like. Most likely still masks, maybe still weekly testing, but if they’re planning on full days of school I’m going to assume the classes won’t be split into morning and afternoon cohorts, so no social distancing. Does this bother me? No. And it looks like progress is happening on vaccines for younger kids, so that could be a game changer.

Speaking of vaccines, as of now out of 550 attendees at my event (440 new sign ups), the medical waiver people is looking pretty good - there’s one kid, two people who approached me about it months ago, one sister of a person who approached me, and one person I don’t know but who may have selected medical waiver on accident as two other people did. I’m sure I’ll get more, but I think my fear that hundreds of right wingers would try to flood me with fake medical waivers was unfounded. In the end, people don’t care that much. They’re content to make nasty comments on social media and send cruel emails, but that’s all they’ve got in them, really. 

This weekend I have my first gig since March of 2020. We had a much needed rehearsal Thursday night, and I struggled. I may for the first time ever try some vocal warmups just so I don’t sound like crap for the first half of the show, which is our new CD release party. Next weekend we have a delayed wedding gig in which I’ll ironically be singing “It’s Been a Long, Long Time”. But that’s it for the summer unless something else pops up. We did get a tentative offer for Austin in November, something we do every year. I think it’ll be fine, even in that reddest of states...but nothing is set in stone. Right now is kind of like walking on sand over concrete - hard and also slippery.

So next week I try to hustle to get all the behind the scenes stuff done that I couldn’t do this week because I was busy dealing with customer service issues - next week I need to start booking travel, get insurance, arrange the class schedule, judging schedule, set up our scholarship system, get my DEI statement vetted by a smart person and published. It’s a lot. I’m going to hustle in this last week I have with kids in school all day. Then we camp in Malibu a good portion of the week after. I hope I get cell service up there.