Onto May

Last night was a big school auction event, which is the main function of the school booster club that I’ve been treasurer for for the last year. I’ve never been to this auction - naturally it was canceled the last two years, and wasn’t really on my radar before that. Unfortunately the person in charge of the auction caught covid last week and so wasn’t able to be there, and so the bulk of the work fell on the booster club’s beleaguered President. I went as support, but as I suspected and as often happens when I’m a volunteer somewhere, it was pretty messy and disorganized and I ended up mostly standing around bored for six hours. It was mainly a venue for my kids’ school’s rich, tragically hip parents to come and get drunk and peacock. I feel a little bad now for how much I judged so many of these people last night when really a) I’m no different and b) I mean, good for them if they’re rich and hip, doesn’t mean they’re bad people. But I guess these things always have high school vibes - I feel like everyone knows each other and I’m the weirdo outsider; all the women seem like mean girls and cheerleaders with their jock husbands (but the hipster version of these things). Eh. Not my peeps. Hence the reason I am in swing dancing, who decidedly are my peeps. 

The end of the night was chaos, with people wandering off with items they were sure they’d won (which they probably didn’t) and drunk people in long lines waiting to check out while the president frantically tried to reconcile hundreds of items on a piece of paper with even more hundreds of bids, while people sauntered up asking, “what did I win??” Uh boy. The organizer in me couldn’t handle the lack of proper systems in place. Even hearing about how it ran earlier in the week I was skeptical it could possibly work. And I was right.

At midnight I finally slipped away after performing my one useful function as treasurer - handing over the check to the venue - and then had a nightmarish journey through labyrinth-like downtown LA to try to retrieve my car, which was of course now behind a locked gate. Thankfully a phone call got someone to let me out. Phew. I am now the proud owner of a multi sign sign post from the event that I will repurpose for our cabin. 

I’d also like to point out I’d had a 300 calorie dinner at 6:00 PM and went on to be tortured by the sight of s’mores and donuts and hot chocolate all night (the event was camping themed). And yet I held strong. Was rewarded this morning by another pound weight loss. All right then.

The kids’ school is suffering a mini-outbreak. Bobby said multiple kids were sent home, and we got letters from the principal. However, today Bobby’s covid test came back negative. Waiting on Theo’s since he doesn’t wear a mask at school anymore. I tested myself on Wednesday after an exposure at that party on Saturday but appear to be negative (I say appear since these home tests are not reliable). I feel like this is the most dangerous time - all restrictions off, and numbers ticking up. If we were ever going to catch it, it would be now. I just pray I or we don’t get it a) right before the wedding, b) right before Fiji, or c) right before my event. 

I open tomorrow, and the online registration is still not ready. I also had a minor crash on the old computer which lead me to start using the new one out of necessity even though it doesn’t have any programs or my email on it, so I’m straddling two computers and a phone to just get through this opening. It’s my own damned fault for not dealing with the computer switch over months ago. I’ll deal with it next week. 

Final week of no income

My event registration opens Sunday. As per usual, despite having asked to have my online registration up for testing weeks ago, it is still not ready. Am I worried about it? No. This happens every year, and every year we manage to make it work in time. It’ll be fine.

So far I’ve had no anti-vaxx negativity, but this is mostly because I’ve avoided mentioning my policy in any of my advertising, and also have not once used my ancient email list where all the lunatics apparently are. I’ve debated never using it again, quite honestly, but I also have to recognize there are plenty of people who can’t or won’t see my social media posts, and those people translate to money. And it sucks that I won’t use that important tool just because I’m afraid of right wing wrath. I may try to send a mass email just mentioning we’re opening again on Wednesday and then never send another one again. I don’t know. I just remember how incredibly naive I was last year thinking I wouldn’t have any detractors…and it got so ugly and out of hand that one asshole was contacting the hotel to get my contract canceled and I had to consult a lawyer to consider a libel lawsuit. Will this person return? Will I face another wave of insults and accusations? I don’t have the stomach for it, I just don’t. But hey, so far so good. At least by Sunday I’ll have a giant pile of money to make me feel better if I’m attacked again. 

School is winding down. You can tell from how empty the streets are for parking in the morning at drop off, and by the kids’ collective uncombed hair and bedraggled parents making their way to the entrance. It’s been an exhausting school year, but infinitely better than the year before. Maybe by next year we won’t have to do this super annoying and performative “daily pass” every day; maybe some activities and special events, like field trips, can finally return. We’re not at normal yet, but getting there slowly. Only a few weeks left now, and I’m sure everyone - especially teachers and support staff - will heave a huge sigh of relief. Come to think of it, I feel like I should send our awesome principal a big bouquet on the last week of school. 

The boys have been walking home every day while I obsessively track them using B’s watch. That purchase has worked out perfectly. And, delightfully, they pick flowers and bring them to me every day. I got a flower press so I can preserve them. The boys aren’t often demonstrative with me (I wonder who they learned that from…) so I treasure these little things. 

After months of no motivation, I decided to, yes, start another diet. It occurred to me that I’m turning 50 in about two months, and going on a honeymoon to Fiji, and honestly…I’d like to feel good about myself when both of those things are happening. I’d like to look back on turning 50 feeling like I was in some of the best shape of my life, not the worst. So as I often do, I decided to combine some techniques that have worked for me in the past and just see what happens. I loved certain aspects of fasting, so I decided to do more “timed eating” as a way to trick myself into eating less, and it’s been working. So basically I just get up and try not to eat until early afternoon, which is surprisingly easy since I’m usually busy or back to sleep during those times. Then I have a large, satisfying lunch, about 800 calories, and a smaller dinner, about 500 calories, and try to keep it under 1400 calories a day which is what my LoseIt app recommended. I also banked a few hundred calories all week towards a birthday party I knew I was attending on Saturday so I could enjoy a piece of cake guilt-free. It’s been a week now, and it’s been a breeze. I feel like this is something I can stick to, maybe even permanently, or do during weekdays only and enjoy weekend eating, like a thin friend of mine in her 50s does; eat sparingly during the week, no breakfast, and then enjoy meals out on weekends. The problem I found with my old fasting regime is it eventually lead me to binge eating on non-fast days because I felt so deprived. It was hard to regulate extreme fasting days with normal days. I’m finding it way easier to just eat “reasonably” all of the time and get into a rhythm with it. Does it work? Well, the math never lies. I’m down 4 lbs already (water weight, I know, but motivating nonetheless). Whereas when I was consuming 2500 calories a day, I was gaining a pound a week right on schedule exactly as the calculators said I would. Now I should lose a pound a week, which should put me on track to at least be back to my old “fat” weight by the wedding, and a decent weight by my birthday, and if I can keep going, a really awesome weight by my event. Or I may just quit once I get to my pre-holiday season weight, who knows. But for the first time in ages I feel like I’m doing something good for my body - I’m currently seven pounds overweight - and I feel positive about it.

Post break

The kids tested negative and returned to school, Theo happy to be with friends, Bobby not happy about it at all. He really is an extreme introvert. Even I liked school at his age, and yet I consider l’enfer, c’est des autres even in the best of times. 

Today I bought little blingy wedges for my wedding, and a pink underskirt that’s simultaneously too long and too tight in the waist arrived from Amazon today. My sister is putting the finishing touches on my dress and mailing it soon. It’s coming together. 

I keep waiting to freak out about the idea of getting married. I always pictured myself as the kind of person to have massive panic attacks around marriage and the totality of it; but, I don’t know - maybe I’m past that part of my life when all major life changes cause anxiety episodes…? I mean, I’m a grown-ass woman, and I do feel good about marrying this person, and it’s not going to change my day-to-day life; it’s not like we’re also moving in together for the first time, or he’s going to be around the kids full time suddenly. We’ve lived together for nearly six years. If this ain’t married life then I don’t know what is. But even with all this said, I do recognize marriage is a whole other thing from dating. I don’t know what being married feels like, but I get glimpses of it on occasion when I look at him and think “this person is my husband”. I feel responsible for him now, like he’s a reflection of me, that we are now seen as a unit. In my mind I still hold him at arm’s length a bit - so much of him is still alien to me, as a man, as someone who grew up in LA and not the east coast, as someone not blood related to me, as someone who didn’t know me before my 40s. He’s still a bit the other, and I don’t know if that will ever change or if that’s even a bad thing. I guess the healthiest dynamic you can have as a wife and mother is to have the mom part of you and the partner part of you and then the much bigger part of you that’s just you.

Someday, all these men will leave me - I picture my life as a one bump sine wave; right now I’m in the “big” phase with all this togetherness and activity, but someday, maybe in ten years or longer, I’ll return to my natural solitary state. The boys will launch off into their lives (hopefully - unless they just live here forever, which, with housing and jobs the way they are currently, doesn’t bode well), and the F, well, most likely will die long before me. After visiting an elderly friend who never recovered from her husband’s death some ten years ago, I said to the F, “it’s funny, the best case scenario of how this ends between us is one of us watching the other die.” Other than divorce, or somehow miraculously dying at exactly the same moment, that’s “the goal” of marriage, to be together until you die. It’s an odd concept. As much as I’m glad all this happened for me later in life when I’m more emotionally mature, I’m also kind of bummed that our entire life together is just going to be watching each other deteriorate. I mean, that’s one way of looking at it - another is that I’m extremely blessed and fortunate to have found a good man to grow old with, who likes to do the same things I do and encourages me in all my efforts and loves me dearly in all my decay. I guess you get to choose your own narrative.

Sometime next week when he’s not so busy we have to sign and notarize the prenup, get a marriage license, and buy him a ring. Is that when it will feel more real? Perhaps. 

I’ve decided I want to take one more stab at staying in the desert before giving up for the season - Mother’s Day weekend is open, and I thought it would be perfect timing to get some security cameras installed out there. I think we should just camp on the spot for a couple of days. The bathroom situation is a bit sketchy - but the F says he’s fine with driving over to the community center. I figure we can use our blow up beds in the sleeping area, which is clear of construction materials, and I need to get a pop up shower tent for the wedding anyway, so we can try that. We don’t even really need to cook since we’re close to food and would only be there Friday night through Sunday afternoon. So that’s on unless there’s extreme heat that weekend. I’m excited to get back out there and make some more plans for bathroom set up and heating and cooling. I have lots of ideas I’m looking to implement.

Here’s the beautiful bodice of my dress my sister constructed of two different appliqués. Can’t wait to try it on.  

The return

We’re back from spring break and doing multiple loads of laundry while I lounge around in preparation for a gig later this evening. It’s amazing how dirty things get out there. I’m glad I had the boys in their hiking boots and jeans all week so their school sneakers didn’t get ruined.

It was a strange, desultory week - we never really had appropriate plans for food or projects day to day; there was a lot of time spent in hardware stores and driving around and grabbing fast food. I have to admit I got sort of pissy mid-week because it all seemed semi pointless; at one point I sent this text to various friends:

“Spring Break Tragedy as mother murders entire family because they won’t stop singing the Animaniacs theme. “They just wouldn’t stop singing it,” said the bedraggled mother as she was led away in handcuffs in an unincorporated area of San Bernardino, local officials reported late Tuesday.”

However, I enjoyed being out there so much that the rest seemed to melt away - the F worked his butt off framing the container, painting it, and installing a security door on the cabin on the final day in anticipation of not being out there for a while. I mostly sat in the shade unless I was needed, and the kids entertained themselves throwing 2x4s at each other. We actually ended up getting more done than I’d thought - but without a working toilet or clean place to sleep and cook, the spot is not useable as yet unless we want to take tents out there. So we just tried to lock it down as best as possible before leaving probably for the summer. 

In a way I’m glad we’re not just throwing it together - the ensuing months will give me time to really plot out a proper bathroom setup, figure out what to do about heat and cooling, what security cameras to get, what color to paint the place, how to finish interior walls, etc etc. Once my event is over I can devote my full time to this place. But for the next five months I’ve got other priorities. 

We have to give the kids covid tests before they return to school Monday. We did a ton of interior maskless activity this week, so it wouldn’t surprise me if at last our luck ran out. Several friends have reported catching covid in the last couple of weeks, everyone with that same defeated “well, I guess it’s my turn” feeling. With no masks it’s only a matter of time, really. I could keep us masked up forever, but local transmission rates just don’t justify it right now, IMO. Famous last words, right? We’ll see what happens over the next few weeks. I predict an uptick but not a surge. 

I open my event registration in two weeks. Once again, I have no idea what to expect. Will I have a big opening night like last year, followed by a whole lot of nothing because everyone’s waiting for the next variant? That seems likely. Or a crappy opening night because everyone figures might as well wait until we know for sure it’s going to be ok. So I could have a small opening since these people are sick of being burned. But other events seem to be doing very well, and people are booking rooms at my hotel, so that’s a good sign. It will be amazing to have actual income again, hopefully this time income that doesn’t have to be returned. 

Unincorporated area

Today I discovered that our desert cabin, which I had believed to be in the city of Twentynine Palms, is in fact considered to be in an “unincorporated area”. This phenomenon of places so remote as to be not under any local governance is a new concept to me as a non-native Californian. This state is rife with such areas, apparently. The F and I both loved the wildness of this. As we drove “home” from the cabin (to an Airbnb five miles away), we realized just how dark it gets in an area that has no streetlights and few to no lit houses, either. If it weren’t for the almost full moon we would have felt like we were inside a cow’s stomach. But this is what this has been all about - the ringing silence and dark skies. It’s our jam.

We’ve been out here since Sunday taking care of some wedding stuff and also attempting to do some work on the cabin - which has looked like contractor #2 spending a couple of hours helping us pop a window in the upstairs, a day of shopping for supplies, and then today painting the shipping container (or rather, Bobby and the F painting it while Theo did nothing and I headed to the wedding venue an hour away to do the final walk through). Tomorrow, depending on people’s exhaustion levels, will be placing another window upstairs or framing in the bathroom in the container. The contractor buried a 55 gallon tank under the container and secured a bucket toilet over it, but the F is skeptical of the potential smell so we haven’t used it. So technically we do not have a working toilet there and may have to try something else. 

I’m not really sure where we’re going with all this; the contractor leaves this weekend until December, and with hot temperatures, the wedding, my event, and my band playing Knott’s Berry Farm every Sunday for four months starting in May, I don’t anticipate us being able to come back out here any time soon. Of course, I’d come any old time - I don’t mind the heat or primitive conditions, and have weekdays free. I hope we can carve out the occasional trip, but I don’t know. Despite this flurry of activity we may have to stop all work until September or October. There’s just too much else going on. 

But for now I have to admit, it’s the first time I’ve felt we’re really out here now, not just visiting a construction site. The days of cookouts and starry skies and lounging in hammocks seems closer than they ever have; I was noticing that fresh dry air smell that’s always out here, and of course, the silence so intense you feel like you’re on a movie set about to do a take. I’ve had The Rolling Stones’ Moonlight Mile on endless repeat. It’s a sweet time for us despite all the upcoming stressors. I’m just so glad everyone has embraced this idea and this place as much as I have. My friends all think I’m crazy doing this, but there’s a piece of my heart forever in the desert now. There’s no looking back.

Breathing

It’s been a stressful few days. The F is working his butt off to be able to take time off next week - which means he hasn’t had a day off in weeks, and is currently on night #5 of getting home at 2AM. Which means I’m doing all meals, showers, bed times, everything. As much as things are cleaner and more regimented when I’m in charge, it also sucks for me. You don’t know how valuable a partner is until you have one and then don’t have one.

We still don’t know what’s going to happen when we head out to the desert on Sunday. I doubt we’ll be able to get anything accomplished out there. At least it’ll be cool so we can enjoy the outdoors - I’d love to drive up to the Mojave and check out some things there we missed last time. And we have the final walkthrough at the wedding space on Wednesday that was delayed three weeks, so that will be a good door to close finally. I’m going to try to focus on just enjoying some family time and time off. We’re rarely all in one place these days - that’s what the cabin was supposed to be for - so it’ll be nice to eat together and play games and go on hikes. 

Yesterday I had a real scare when I finally heard from the state grant I applied for six long months ago…only to be told I have been found ineligible. It took a lot of digging around to discern that the problem was the business activity code on my taxes does not match the ones required for eligibility, even though the description of the business activity is exactly the same. I went nuts calling and emailing everyone I could think of to protest - the company administering the grant unfortunately had zero information - but several hours of rage and adrenaline later, I finally got through to a couple of arts advocacy organizations who both told me that this issue affected more than half the applicants and will be addressed in the CA state legislature (the law has to be re-written and voted on to fix it), and that they hope it will be resolved by June. I can’t tell you the relief. Of course there’s still no guarantees I’ll get the money in the end…but there is hope that I just might, in a couple of months. And wouldn’t that make a lovely wedding present?

While I was busy freaking out about this, I had a scheduled phone call with my epidemiologist friend to help me set the covid policy for my event, which, of course, was far more complicated than I ever would have imagined. There are so many factors this year that didn’t exist last year - boosters, recent infection providing better protection than vaccines, the fact that the vaccine doesn’t protect you from catching or spreading it, the increased transmissibility, etc etc. I borrowed liberally from other event policies and cobbled something together, mostly, that all policies are subject to change as the pandemic changes. In the middle of this I found out two recent events became small superspreaders - at one, almost 50% of attendees caught it. It was a small event so only 20 people, but still. One of the people at it just messaged me urging me to enforce masks and daily testing at my event. Ugh. No. I’ve got to be honest - if I didn’t have a $200,000 hotel contract to worry about breaking, I would be seriously considering not even opening this year just for my own sanity. There is no way people aren’t going to catch covid at my event no matter what I do. The event where 50% of people caught it, they all tested to get in, so obviously the testing didn’t catch it. I fucking give up.

Tonight I’m thinking more and more about the woman who, back in 2020, advised all of us event runners to get new careers, that we’d never be able to do this again. She might just be right, you know? Feeling very defeated and scared.

In a moment of optimism today I went in and adjusted my mortgage to include extra principal along the lines of what I was paying pre-pandemic, in a bid to try to pay off the house completely in seven years, just two years shy of when my original mortgage would have ended, and just as Bobby finishes up his junior year in high school. I have zero idea how I’m going to maintain these payments for seven years - especially while I’m simultaneously considering quitting the business entirely - but I needed a moment of hope, I guess. 

April

I had a bit of a spiral this week upon learning that a dance organizer friend is being sued over his event requiring vaccines - this is in Tennessee which recently enacted a law forbidding this; what happened to Republicans being pro-business and anti-government interference…? While I doubt that could happen here in CA, a local dance studio has been threatened with a similar lawsuit (nothing filed yet), and there are certain aspects of requiring vaccines for a business that could potentially get you into a sticky legal area (not going to point these out here). Suffice it to say we’re all enraged and frustrated - the group being sued has a GoFundMe that hit its $10,000 goal almost immediately, and there’s been tons of support. So I find out about this lawsuit, and am all triggered and angry all day, then go to dinner with some book club friends in the hopes of wiping that out of my brain. In a bizarre coincidence, one of the right-leaning members, who is a healthcare worker who is vaccinated but doesn’t want the booster because of some health issues she’s convinced were because of the vaccine but are probably more likely from the two times she caught covid (my opinion), started railing about CA’s law that all healthcare workers need to be boosted and how the TN law is so amazing and the way things should be everywhere, and how she’s sick of Big Pharma controlling everything and how everything is a conspiracy and how her family took ivermectin for their covid and it worked great (not a thing), and how she applied to one of these right wing organizations for a bogus religious exemption to keep her job and how she’s sick of being discriminated against (white person’s concept of discrimination). It was like listening to an Alex Jones podcast in real life. I could barely contain myself, but did point out that friends of mine are being sued because they are trying to keep their events safe and I hate that stupid law. We kept it civil, and it was fine, but boy oh boy have I been triggered all week. All of this only adds to my abject terror of opening up my event in just one month and what harassment, legal or otherwise, I’m opening myself up to. 

I finally talked myself off the ledge by reminding myself that, just like with the TN event, I have tons of support - I’m sure if I found myself sued over covid policies, I could get legal help and financial help to see my way through. I keep reminding myself it’s not like when I was sued in 1999 - I had no money and no support and no coping mechanisms, and it was all horrendous. I still have terrible ptsd from that, which is manifesting itself now. The anti-vaxxers are organized, funded, and vicious. They 100% will come after me if it occurs to them to do so. But there are far more of us than them. I think the best I can tell myself is, yes, there’s a higher probability this year that I’ll be sued than any other, but it won’t be the end of me or my business, and I’ll get through it. Still doesn’t exactly help me sleep at night, though. 

At least one stressor is (mostly) behind me, which is the prenup discussion, which went as simply as, “sure, whatever makes you comfortable”. Now I’m waiting on a second draft, and he has to read it, and that may make it a lot more real to him and may bring up some issues, but I doubt it. He knows how paranoid I am about protecting these assets, and is also not an entitled person. And odds of divorce at our age I think are pretty slim, considering where we’re at in our lives. Suffice it to say I think we’ll breeze through the prenup process, which is a huge relief. 

Contractor #2 is leaving in two weeks, and I’m not sure what’s going to get done before he goes. He still has to finish the roof, and says he wants to start on a toilet for us, but I’m not sure what’s going to happen with windows and a door. I don’t know if he’s going to leave it in any position to be used before he’s gone until the end of the year. Does it matter? Will we even get out there this summer with the heat and all we have going on? The future of the place is very uncertain at the moment. For now we are heading out there a week from tomorrow and I’m not sure what condition we’ll find it in, or what, if anything, we’ll be able to get done out there for the five days we’re there. I keep seeing FB memories of last year’s spring break trip to Anza Borrego and I’m dying of FOMO to be doing something fun like that instead. I wish we were able to have adventures this year, but unfortunately the wedding and the return of my event have rendered all of that impossible. I’m longing for that day in September when all of this is behind me - maybe even covid is on an extended retreat - and I can finally exhale.