Still negative

The boys are still testing negative at school, thank goodness. Every week is a gift. I’m even newly inspired to cook dinner, now that I have days to myself. In many ways, things are so much better than last year - for the most part things are open, schools are open, I’m back to doing the shopping...while big events are mostly off limits and travel is scary, I still can’t run my event and our band still can’t play, at least we have some small semblance of normalcy. I guess it’s good to be grateful for the small things right now, even though this summer has been a huge bummer for everyone. 

In the absence of anything else to do, I’ve been having fun doing wedding stuff, which is the next event I get to plan. After months of searching for a dress I finally broke down and asked a friend for help. We were going to go next week. She asked me to check the online inventory of various stores - and I came to the conclusion that most wedding dresses are stupid and I hate them. Even the more “unique bride” shops had dresses that completely lacked any imagination, and they tended to be $1500 and up. That’s a big no. It’s just such a different story when you have two kids and are 49. Had I been twenty years younger I’m sure I would have gone for a sweet 1940’s satin dress and it would have been lovely. But none of those tiny dresses will fit me, and I also am afraid of a “mutton dressed as lamb” effect. Long story short, I came upon a delightful ethereal “boudoir dress” made in Russia for $178 and ordered it. It’s got a sort of greenish/grey tinge with grey appliqués and it’s just beautiful and perfect. And best of all if I hate it it’s only $178 so I can just toss it and start over. Today I ordered a pair of lucite 1950’s shoes from eBay to go with. I’ll also get a tulle underskirt for the dress since it’s pretty much see through. I’m trying to get all these things out of the way now when I have the mental energy so I can forget about it for a while. After all we have the great holiday trifecta coming up - Halloween - Thanksgiving - Christmas, and that’ll take a lot of my emotional labor right there.

I also have offered to accompany a friend for Spanish lessons and am restoring my recently acquired 1920s saxophone and may start lessons with that. I may also not follow through with any of this. I’ve learned it’s ok to make plans to start projects and then not actually start them. Today I threw out rotten cucumbers and dill I bought weeks ago to make into pickles and never did. And so it goes. 

The boys’ homework officially begins next week, so school starts in earnest now. We have a four day week followed by a three day week and then it’s mid-September already. I don’t think we’re ever going to have a Big Bake this year - we’ve made it almost to Labor Day with never a triple digit day; I think the Pacific Northwest took one for the team this summer. 

How do I feel going into what would have been the final week before my event? Nothing but relief, really. Normally this is a terrible stressful time for me - and this year would have been far, far worse. Instead I’m just chilling. I’m a little sad, of course, and a little afraid for the future, as we all are. Can I recover from two years off? Will people still remember us a whole year from now? Will we have to cancel a third time? Will we all survive this and subsequent surges? How bad will it get this winter? Will next summer be the same? Nobody has any answers. For now I’m just going to bury myself in Pinterest “messy bun wedding hair” and try not to worry about it too much. 

Save the date

We had our third and hopefully not last visit to the Boulder gardens this weekend for the dual purpose of checking out our cabin build on Saturday and then viewing wedding venues Sunday. It was an exhausting weekend with good and bad things. Upon arrival at the Boulder gardens we realized that as much as we love it there, it just wouldn’t work for a wedding - there was literally no flat area for a reception at all, despite it having a very cool ceremony area. It just wouldn’t work. 

Start with the good - I am getting married on June 4th of next year, and in the place I wanted from the beginning; the bougie glamp desert compound in Yucca Valley that I emailed before we were engaged just to get rates. It’s such a relief to have this nailed down (deposit check and signed contract in the mail) so I can just focus on save the date invites and then forget about it for a while. On Sunday we got up early to see one place built on a ruin that was a nicely set up one-day venue; definitely my favorite of the cheaper one day options. Then we went to another one day place in a more suburban neighborhood - while the place itself was very nice, the fact that it wasn’t remote bothered both of us (the “Fuck Biden” flag on the house next door didn’t help...at all). I wanted to see a wacky artists’ compound that wasn’t really set up for weddings but was still a possibility, but they couldn’t meet us until too late, and we were all so cranky and tired at this point that I pushed our final venue meeting up two hours and we headed over. And of course, it was perfect. 40 acres in beautiful Yucca Valley with a gorgeous main house, various glamp sites all around for our compound, even a small lake...it’s just perfect. Of course, a full-weekend extravaganza with housing for 20 is no joke...and not cheap. I mentioned how I pay first and ask questions later, right? I also got the F to agree to my very non-traditional processional and first dance music (not surprisingly), so yay there. I’m going to have fun with this. We all need a little goddamn joy right now, dammit. 

The not-great part of the weekend was the cabin visit. I intended to ask questions about the placement of the outhouse, windows, security, etc etc...and our whole visit got sidelined by a very awkward conversation in which the contractor asked if we would be willing to float him a loan he could pay back over the next year to help him get over some business debts. Um....no? I mean even if I hadn’t just canceled my event, I would never enter into an agreement like that. Not that I think he’s a bad guy - I really don’t think he is - I just think he’s kind of a mess and his situation doing this kind of work is so precarious, I absolutely don’t believe he would pay us back, not one bit. So we spent an agonizing hour and a half in the hot sun and wind awkwardly talking about this, while I kept trying to steer him back to the practicalities of the actual build, and the kids sat in the car with the AC running. Nothing was accomplished with that visit, and I was a bit put off by some executive decisions he’d made - moving the door to the other side of the house, making what should have been small sleeping lofts into an entire 6’ high extra story that makes the once small cabin look top heavy and awkward, and using this cheap vertical wood paneling on the outside that looks like some kind of 1970s barn...ugh. Nope, nope, nope. Then all of a sudden the idea to hire a water company to come out and fill our tank and maintain it was no longer a thing - people will steal your tank, the water will develop bacteria, the company won’t come out for a small job like ours. The F and this guy tried to hash out this extremely complicated gravity system in which we could lift five gallon tanks up to the sleeping lofts and fill a tank that would attach to the now attached bathroom...um, no. In about three seconds once we got home I found a battery charged portable water heater used by dog groomers that will work just fine for our 2-4 showers per month and occasional dishwashing. If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s over-complication of things, and this weekend was rife with that. Between this guy stressing me out and then the F randomly saying to me in the middle of our venue tours, “you know, this is really too far for people to drive - you should really try to find something closer, like an hour outside of LA,” to which I answered, “so what you’re saying is I should completely scrap everything I’ve been doing for the past month and throw all that work down the toilet and start from scratch so people can drive an hour less...?” I was just about done with men for a while. They can be super annoying. And yet I’m marrying one, go figure. 

The contractor has since retracted his ask for a loan and apologized for even asking and said it was wrong of him to ask (all true) which was a relief. In texts I’ve tried to move back to talk about the actual build. I definitely am losing confidence that this build will be completed, and even if it is, that it will be done the way we want. I’m just going to cross my fingers and hope that this place works out and we can one day enjoy it. 

Progress

Yesterday my galvanized sink arrived for the cabin; I’ve ordered the wood burning stove which will be ready to pick up next week, and work has begun on the place. These are pictures of the framing going up earlier this week.

In going over some information online, I discovered my 5 acre plot is oriented the opposite of what I had thought - I thought the cabin was at the top of the plot but it turns out we’re at the bottom and the 5 acres stretches above us to the north, an area I’ve never walked. The good news is the plot south of us has nothing on it, and the plot north of us is government land, so we have a good long 15 acre area to play around in. When my finances improve I may try to seek out the owner of the plot south of us to see if I can pick it up, too. 

The contractor wants to finish up in a couple of weeks. We will try to meet with him tomorrow when we’re out there looking for wedding venues. I think many of our weekends coming up will involve trips out there to check on progress and bring things out. I imagine at some point we’ll have to rent a uhaul and bring a whole truckload of furniture out there - three mattresses, a Hoosier, table and chairs, kitchen stuff. It’s odd to think of completely furnishing a place from scratch. 

The boys’ first week of school has gone smoothly. Until today, they’ve had no homework (Bobby will have an assignment this weekend). They were tested for covid yesterday and so far Bobby has come back negative. I’m just taking things one week at a time - at any moment we could be shut down entirely, have to quarantine, get sick ourselves, who knows? But for now they’ve had one week at school and it’s been ok. 

For me, I’m in that slightly feral state that always happens when the kids go back to school - in response to having to wake up early, I’m taking lots of naps, which then makes it hard to go to sleep, which then makes me want more naps. There’s not much to do so I’m spending way too much time doom scrolling and watching pointless tv. I’m still picking away at my refunds, but I haven’t heard from 300 people still. I will send a reminder email next week, but the cut off is in two weeks, so people had better get their butts in order. 

I had said I was over traveling for a while, but honestly I’m really glad to be headed back out to the desert this weekend. I need a change of scenery and a weekend spent focusing on positive things and not going down the existential rabbit hole as I have been. 

First Day (yesterday)

The first day of school yesterday went well. Cars were lined all the way down the block. I have not seen that since March 13, 2020. That was the last time all the kids were together. The transition to afterschool went well, and I was glad to see the kids hot and sweaty. It means they’d been running around playing outdoors for two hours, rather than at home watching gamer videos. 

I picked them up and we went to get traditional first day of school ice cream. Neither had any homework, so we had a chill evening. Both liked their teachers. The year ahead remains an enigma. More than ever before, this school year is going to be one day at a time.

I had a bit of a cry in the car after dropping them off. Most of it is the standard “my babies are growing up too fast”, but it’s also everything else - how sad and scary and disappointing the last month has been, how robbed we all feel (everyone, of the sense of safety, and me, of an income yet again), how these years are slipping by and we’re suffering in a pandemic instead of really living. And yet, we are living - the kids are growing like weeds, we’re having adventures, I’m building a vacation house, I’m getting married. A lot of positive, life-affirming things going on despite all this. But still...it’s a lot.

Speaking of the cabin, work did in fact begin yesterday, with photos to prove it. I feel a bit bad about tearing down the old structure, but what can you do when the wood is all rotten? Now comes the time for making real structural decisions - the F and I did an exhaustive measuring and plotting session last night that left us both with our heads swimming - and I ordered the galvanized sink I’ve had my eye on for months. It’s finally really happening. I’m excited. 

It turns out the dive bar has zero interest in hosting weddings, so that’s that. Back to the drawing board as far as venues. I hope we come back from the weekend with some sense of clarity - I’d hate to return with no deposits put down, no date, and no idea what to do next. But that’s a distinct possibility. It may all be for naught, and we may miss out on spring entirely and have to push to fall or a full year. We’ll see what we find. 

Tomorrow, tomorrow

Today I labeled all the boys’ stuff for school and got their back packs together. In a few hours we watch a meet your teacher zoom for Bobby’s 4th grade teacher - Theo’s 2nd grade teacher is the one Bobby had, so we know her already. Tonight they need to bathe and we need to do laundry. Alarm is set for my new weekday wake up. Here we go.

How do they feel about returning to school? Well, Bobby has decided anything that isn’t watching hours of gamer videos is a drag, and I don’t think Theo is too enthused about school either but he’s such a social kid that he gets more out of it. When I was this age I loved school, but things were different for me - I’m a girl, and schools are just set up more for typically girl characteristics; also, my home life sucked, so school was an improvement. I have to keep reminding myself that school is different for boys - it’s a lot harder for them to sit still for hours and pay attention. Unless of course video games or gamer videos are involved. Ugh. 

For me, I’m going to try to enjoy these last years of two kids in the same school as much as I can. In two years Bobby starts sixth grade, probably in a new school, and then most likely he and Theo will rarely cross paths again. Everything will be so different then. I spend way too much time wondering what these boys’ adolescence will be like, what they’ll be like, what their school and friend lives will be like, if they’ll start to show signs of heading towards a career path, if our relationship will completely fall apart? I’d like to think the happy, stable foundation we’ve given them so far will go a long way. But they’re only halfway through their childhoods so far. So much can still happen.

Next weekend we head out to the desert to look at wedding venues. If they all don’t work out - which is a distinct possibility since most are fully booked for the spring - there’s always the option of having the ceremony at the cabin and then looking into renting the nearby dive bar/performance venue for the reception, which could be fun and possibly cheaper than an all-inclusive venue that caters to weddings. But that dive bar is closed for the summer so we can’t even investigate that option yet. And everyone warns me that trying to make a raw space into a wedding venue can be more expensive than just renting a wedding venue, and I know that’s true. But we’ll see. Personally I can’t wait to get back out there next weekend. 

The cabin renovation is supposed to start tomorrow after many delays - the contractor just asked me for a third check, which bugs me since as of today nothing has happened; I’m terrified of being conned by this person even though I have no reason to think he’d do that. I just don’t trust contractors, and I know I’m not alone in this sentiment. We’re supposed to meet up as part of our trip out there next weekend. If I get out there and he doesn’t show up and nothing has happened at the cabin, then I’ll know I’ve been had. 

I visited a friend in Santa Barbara yesterday and she gave me a 1920s saxophone. I took it because I like collecting instruments. There is a part of me that wants to learn how to play it even though my every attempt at learning to play instruments has been a total failure; I can just never follow through with it. In looking forward to my empty, boring fall and winter, though, there are so many things I really should do:

Develop a Yoga routine

Develop a daily toning/abs/weight lifting routine

Learn an instrument

Get back to learning Portuguese

Do some winter gardening

Double back to my knitting and actually learn something beyond just making basic washcloths over and over

However, this is what I’ll most likely do:

My daily walk

Shower

Sit on bed and watch trash TV until it’s time to pick up the kids 

Obsessively doom scroll 

Do absolute bare minimum with regards to self care / housecleaning / cooking 

Which is what I’ve done since March 2020. Sigh. We’re all bored and fed up and sad and exhausted. While I have so much to be grateful for, and even, shockingly, to look forward to, I have to admit, the ennui is real. 

Back to school blues

This should be such a happy time. Last week we did new clothes and backpacks and haircuts; today after hunting down the school supply lists, I bought all their school supplies. I discovered pens are expensive AF. Mind you, I’m still excited for return to school and the support and steadiness school brings, and with our school being full of leftie science believing rule followers, I’m not very concerned about health risks. Everyone is masked, everyone will be distancing, everyone is tested every week. However, the mood in the country is one of high anxiety around kids in schools and the havoc that may soon descend upon us; this will be nothing like last spring. Now we’re all in real danger. If I think about it enough, it’s pretty horrifying. I’m under no illusion that my kids won’t finally succumb to coronavirus this school year, bring it home and infect us even with our vaccines, and the F with his smoker’s lungs may not survive it. Yes, these things are all possible as the kids start school on Monday.

Also possible, and talked about more and more lately although mostly referring to places that won’t enforce mask wearing, is schools shuttering again. I’d like to say LAUSD will be immune to that, but who knows? I’ve given up making predictions at this point. The kids will either be fine at school or they won’t. The schools will stay open or they won’t. As usual, nobody knows anything. Is it the end of my world if schools close? Not really. Again, I have the extreme privilege of working from home without actually working - kids being home again only means I don’t have to wake up hella early and shuffle them into the car with shoes and socks on. But I worry for people who don’t have this privilege. How much more of this can they take? 

I hid from my email all weekend and then took a deep breath and opened it up Monday morning and dove head first into processing what has now been 330 refund requests. I’ve spent all week on it and am now caught up, but the requests continue to trickle in, and I’m not even halfway there. Nobody has been rude although some people just send an email saying “refund” with no name or anything...I guess it’s my job to figure out who the fuck they are...but just when I think those people are mad at me, when I write back to tell them their refund has been issued they usually write again telling me how sorry they are. Just goes to show you can’t read tone from an email. Equally amusing are the acquaintances who send me long paragraphs telling me how much they admire me and what a force I am in the dance world...and then ask for their money back. I say amusing because this is exactly what I would do in their position. I feel like writing back, “sure, I’ll take that lousy $160 out of my children’s mouths that you paid in February of 2020 and give it back to you if it’s so goddamned important, sure...” but I doubt they’d get the dark humor. 

Also kind of wishing instead of writing a lengthy soliloquy on the impossibility of running a large indoor event in my cancellation email I had simply emailed everyone, “we’re canceling because y’all motherfuckers nasty”, but again, not sure if anyone other than me would get the joke. 

So now I just wait and see what’s left after the carnage. I’m seeing a decent number of donations which is good, and of course transfers to next year. But I’m sure I’ll be refunding at least $70,000-$90,000. And remember some of that money was made early in 2020 as people are sick of deferring passes year after year. One bright spot is I may get another grant in a couple of weeks and a state one in October. So those may really save my ass this year. 

Now I pick up the kids from their cheap little Rec center camp that they’ve actually really been enjoying. I’m going to miss these simple summer days. This school year is going to be a rollercoaster. 

Official

After days of agony waiting for word, the hotel gave me the go ahead last night to cancel, and they will, once again, waive my $200,000 cancellation fee. I knew they probably would, but not hearing anything for four days was stressful. I sent an official letter today, citing the public health concern and expressing my wish to have a long and mutually beneficial relationship in the future.

I was going to hold off on publicly announcing until Sunday night or Monday so I could have one last weekend of peace...but my plans all got canceled today, so I’m stuck at home, which is the perfect time to do all of the admin work involved - contact the 700 remaining attendees, make social media announcements, update the website, manage messages. I’m going to hide from my email for the weekend, though. That’s Monday morning stuff. 

I’m sure I’ll get some naysayers but mostly people have applauded my move, which reminds me that, even though I am genuinely canceling out of concern for the community, making this sacrifice definitely builds trust for me and my event going forward, which is a good thing. I was really scared of appearing reckless or selfish in continuing on in the face of mounting evidence against having an event, and now I don’t have to be concerned with that. I guess this is what you call leadership. And I (hopefully) will never know the terror of creating a super spreader event. Phew. 

I took the boys for their pre-school start coronavirus tests today. Poor kids. They will have to endure this every week. They are such troopers. I should make us some chocolate ice cream today. 

Canceled

Not one to rest on my laurels, I canceled the event today. I thought, what possible information could happen in the next two weeks that would make me want to do the amount of frantic last minute work it will take to put this on? What could the news say that will convince me it’s suddenly safe to bring hundreds of people together to breathe on each other for four days? Our coronavirus infection numbers are not going to improve between now and then. So I closed the registration page and made a preliminary announcement that we’re assessing the situation and will update at the end of the week. I don’t want to shock people (some people reeeeally don’t pay attention) and I want people to know I’m on top of it. So that’s that. I’ll formally cancel on Friday.

I called the hotel and the person I’ve been talking to says I shouldn’t worry about being charged, but of course there are steps - she has to approach the general manager, I’ll probably have to put it in writing, etc. We don’t know what their decision will be, but I’m hoping for the best. 

I also have been slowly unraveling with the staff - I’ve told most of the key people other than some teachers, and of course everyone is supportive and, I would imagine, relieved. Quite a bit more to do tomorrow as far as informing people who work for me, updating the website, preparing for refunding 700 people (ugh). Still? WAY less work than trying to put this event together. WAY less. 

Honestly, I’m so relieved I feel like dancing across the floor like Tina Turner. I’m free, I’m free of this hot mess. And I can just sit and wait and watch until I’m damned well ready for next year’s event to begin. 

In other news, last night I pitched the F my fantasy hippie desert compound wedding concept and he was down (of course) so we’re going to head out there in a couple of weeks to look at venues. We both want spring, so it’s stressful wanting to hustle to get something locked down in time. I don’t know how the eff I’m going to pay for all this. I guess I’ll just do what I always do and pay first and ask questions later. 

August

It is August. And in the next couple of weeks I may have to cancel my event. 

I feel like it’s March 2020 all over again. All anyone can talk about or think about is coronavirus. I’m so sick of it. Like many, I thought we were, for the most part, done with this nonsense. I thought we were safe now that we’re vaccinated. Neither turned out to be true. In the last week numbers have gone up. And we’ve also discovered that vaccinated people transmit the virus just as much as unvaccinated. I’m also privy to some as yet unpublished information that shows vaccinated people are contending with a completely different variant than unvaccinated, which is extremely disturbing. Folks, we may soon find ourselves back at square one. 

My event can’t continue. It just can’t. Even with the hotel partnering with me to mass test all attendees - my epidemiologist friend pointed out that someone who tests negative on Friday night could be shedding by Saturday. And yesterday it dawned on me that mass testing the first day of the event could cause a huge problem - with the virus now so prevalent (and way more prevalent in a month I’m sure), the odds of key staff members testing positive is pretty good. What do I do if volunteers, band leaders, sound engineers, teachers, our contest tabulator, etc, turn up positive on day one? I have no reasonable back up plan for this, and it’s a distinct possibility. This could cause a major disaster at the door as customers show up and we have to cancel right under their noses. Back before vaccinated people could get infected it was no big deal if someone was carrying some tiny viral load (we thought) in a room full of vaccinated people - but the science has changed. Now it would be irresponsible not to test, and testing could in itself cancel the event. 

But there’s all the other things, too. The indoor mask mandate was sort of the end for me. There’s no good answer on what to do about horn players, singers and announcers and masks, not to mention competitors. Having to wear a mask for 12+ hours while sweating and breathing heavily is a huge drag (I know medical professionals do this every day, but we’re talking about people who aren’t used to it). And there’s the finances. I am at 50% my usual capacity, and I don’t see that changing. In looking at the money, I am already in the hole. Having to shell out $120,000 to pay for the event is not going to help. Refunding $120,000 isn’t going to help, either, but I’m hoping people will be generous and transfer to next year or donate their passes at least in some small amount. Thank god for that grant. I wanted it to go for other things than basic survival for yet another year, but at least it’s there. 

This event was supposed to be a big, joyful celebration. There’s no way it can be that now. Everyone is full of anxiety, worried about big events, and scared for the future. The event is already half empty with no good competitors in the contest. I picture it being really sad and depressing. Honestly I feel like it will do more damage to my brand to push this thing through at all costs than to just cancel now. 

So my mind is pretty much made up. But there’s the small issue of wiggling out of my hotel cancellation fee. And my grant conditions were at least in part dependent on my event actually happening, so I’d have to try to figure that out. These are two huge problems. 

There’s going to be so much to unravel. Everyone’s going to be so disappointed. I dread the reaction. In my mind I don’t think people will be as sympathetic as they were last year...the F disagrees with this and thinks I should do a Go Fund Me, but I heartily disagree. The grant has me covered - I don’t need to put my hand out. I’ve seen sympathy for people vanish the minute they publicly ask for money, and then every move they make is scrutinized from that moment on (oh, she was so broke, huh? How is she renovating that cabin? How did they pay for that wedding? How did they buy that car? How did she afford those new glasses? Believe me, I’ve seen it all). 

For me, emotionally, it’s been bad. Yesterday as all of this was sinking in I was in such a state I could barely function. The boys saw me crying (an extremely rare event around here) and Theo demanded to know what was going on. They don’t really get it. I wish I had the kind of kids that were really in tune with me and would come up and hug me when I’m visibly upset - but I don’t. Perhaps I haven’t properly modeled this for them. They remind me a bit of my old dog, who when I was lying on the floor dying of pregnancy nausea would not lie next to me for comfort but instead bring over her leash and drop it in front of me, demanding to be taken out. 

Both medical people I’ve been consulting with have told me to wait - that we’ll learn a lot in the next week or two about the risks to vaccinated people. I agree a few more days is needed to make an informed decision. And the hotel details need to be worked out which will take time. But in my mind it’s already off. I refuse to do any more emotional or physical labor on this thing. I’m mad at myself for the flights I bought and products I ordered and work I did last week already. At least this year I’m not waiting for a home refinance to go through before I can announce. And I have no partners to hold me back - it’s just me, all alone, deciding all this. Here we go.