Almost

I am counting the seconds until my customer service days are over - just two more full days, then we’re off to the hotel. As per usual, we will be enduring a wicked heat spell all weekend and in to next week, so we’ll be carrying heavy boxes up and down stairs for hours in the sun in triple digit temperatures tomorrow and Tuesday. Sigh.

Things got a bit messy the last few days as people started trickling in mentioning that they didn’t realize we are requiring boosters - and of course it’s too late to get one. I don’t know why you wouldn’t check a thing like this…but to be fair, in following my epidemiologist friend’s advice, I had just said we’d be “following CDC guidance” as far as what constitutes “fully vaccinated” with a link to their website; even though I mention boosters as well, I can see how this was confusing. Again, you’d think this is something you’d check…and on the actual registration form it does say we require boosters if you’re eligible. But, here we are dealing with human behavior again - people don’t check these things, make assumptions, and then panic and ask for an exception at the last minute. At first I just said no and refunded people…but then it became too many people, and then I thought what if literally hundreds of people just show up with no booster…then what?? And this could very likely happen. So I’m having to pivot and make a contingency plan. I’ve reached out to those I already turned away. It’s a mess.

I wasn’t planning on telling the H about this because he’s against my policy to begin with and has told me over and over how stupid it is and how I need to just drop it. This has lead to many unpleasant conversations as you can imagine. A) I’m following the advice of an actual epidemiologist, B) I can’t pull the rug out from under everyone at the last minute and reverse my vaccine policy, and C) this is the standard of all other dance events right now. So as much as I agree that everyone can catch and spread covid so vaccine mandates are totally useless, I have to stick with what I’ve promised people. Anyway, last night he could tell I was stressing out and asked what was wrong and of course I had to tell him, and of course he started in with, “I told you that whole policy should have been dropped weeks ago-“ and I cut him off telling him he seriously has to stop saying that and I need some fucking support right now. For as much as his male everything-has-to-be-based-on-logic-with-no-nuance thing can drive me utterly bonkers, thankfully when I speak up and tell him that I need support and not criticism, he gets it. It reminds me of that time we stayed up on Mt Baldy and the guy working the chair lift went off on me for stepping in the way of the chair to pull Theo out of danger - just yelling at me like I was a fucking idiot for not wanting my kid to get brained by a giant metal chair - and then when I went to the then BF to tell him how upset I was for being yelled at like that, he just said the guy was right. I was crushed. This was the kind of shit my mother used to do with me -zero support or comfort, just always, “well what were you doing doing that anyway?” I was attacked on the street once by a gang of kids and all she could say to me, in that very boomer mom kind of way, was that it was my fault for being there and I brought it on myself for “shaking my cute little ass”. Yes, she said that to me. Later she tried to comfort me but I just shook her off. So, suffice it to say, I am extremely triggered when the person closest to me does not support me when I’m in trouble and insists it’s my fault!! Thankfully he got it when I told him this - he’s cool like that - and the conversation turned from derision and blame to working on practical solutions. It’s a work in progress. 

For now I have just endless refund requests to handle (I cannot WAIT to reinstate my no refunds policy - I’m literally refunding thousands of dollars to people because their kid has a baseball game) and a few last minute details and then we’re off. Pray for me. 

Back to school night

Tonight was a first for me as I was able to attend my first back to school night, I think ever. Parents are finally allowed back on campus, so it was a joyous reunion of moms and dads I mostly hadn’t seen since fall of 2019. Sometimes I feel like the damage done by the loss of that year of school will never be undone - all the missed opportunities to socialize and get to know these people; Bobby has one foot out of this school, which, sadly, means I do as well, as I feel myself already separating myself emotionally from the place in anticipation of the day it won’t be part of our lives anymore. The majority of people there now are strangers to me, since both my kids are older. I hope we can have the Halloween festival and Christmas pageant again like normal times…it’s things like that that connect you to a place. 

For today, though, I got to see the rooms my kids spend most of their time in, meet their teachers, and look at the walls and out the windows my kids will look at (hopefully) until next June, when things will be so different. It’s interesting - delightful, really - to see how much kids’ emotional well being is addressed  at school these days; I was trying to picture what a back to school night might have been like in the early 80s when I was their age. I can’t imagine any thought whatsoever was given to our mental health. I’m often shocked by the levels of trauma people my age endured just by existing forty or fifty years ago; it’s no wonder everyone is anxious and depressed.

Bobby is pretty much what I would have been minus trauma; there’s no doubt he’s a sensitive, cautious child prone to getting scared or grossed out easily, all traits he no doubt genetically got from me. But there’s a different element there when you take a kid that has those genetic markers but put him in a loving stable home. We’ll see what happens in his adolescence - that’s where it all fell apart for me - but so far he seems like a happy, well-adjusted kid. And Theo doesn’t have my personality at all, so, you know, good for him-!

My event looms a week away and I am slowly plugging away at all the last minute projects. Everything will get done. But I’m so sick of it all already - I’m very much looking forward to it all being over. I’m sick of the round-the-clock customer service, the snarky social media bullshit, the now daily experience of discovering something I paid for in 2019 is now double or triple the cost, because, you know, gas prices. Unfortunately I have not experienced a last minute bump in attendance. We close on Tuesday, and right now I’m getting maybe one or two people signing up vs five to ten canceling and wanting their money back each day. I’ve never had a final week like this, ever. Normally I can guarantee about 200 people in the last week. This year I’ll be lucky to get 20. It sucks. So, I’m operating at about 2007 numbers, just over half my normal attendance. Sigh. With over 250 people in free, it’ll still look full. But I’ll know the money is not what I need it to be. I think between costs, anti vaxxers unable to attend, and people still scared of covid, I got hammered this year. My only hope is that by next year, my big 25th anniversary, that I’ll be able to rebuild a bit back to what I had in 2019. In the meantime at least I raised my prices to take some of the sting out of the reduced attendance. It’s still probably the biggest dance event this year, so it’s all relative. 

For now I get up frikken early again tomorrow, get the kids to school, get groceries, do laundry, and work work work. I can’t wait for that moment that we’re in the cabin again next month. Watching our shipping container on our security cameras is the only thing that gives me any peace right now.

First week

We have survived the first week of school, and my event is two weeks away, which is utterly bizarre to me. Much to my chagrin, despite having been told our school is moving towards being a no-homework school, both boys had homework all week starting on Tuesday. Bobby is capable of doing his without much oversight, but Theo is another story. It’s been like pulling teeth all week. His teacher has a list of things they need to do each night which I have to sign, including 30 minutes of reading. This, too, is torture, as he fools around most of the time and asks, “how many more minutes?” way more than he actually reads. I’m hoping these shenanigans calm down as we get past this first week which is always a difficult adjustment. Also, the boys have insisted I pick them up each day because it’s too hot to walk home - and it pretty much is, and probably will be for the next month. Not like it’s some huge inconvenience for me to go get them…but I don’t want them to get too into the habit of me driving up there all the time. I still stand by the fact that they need a little freedom and independence, and walking home is a big part of that.

Yesterday I decided to make that long solo drive out to the desert to check on the cabin, and enjoyed it immensely. As far as damage, there was none, except that one corner of the foundation that I was worried about. I got into the place and was struck by how it was exactly as we left it Memorial Day weekend; that familiar smell of baking hot wood hit me as soon as I cracked open the door and has haunted me ever since. Sigh. I wish I could just stay there. 

But I got in the car for the 2 1/2 hour drive home and have experienced nothing but tsuris since. On the drive I got calls and emails from my new sound/floor guy telling me how incompetent my hotel contact is and my hotel contact calling me to tell me how mean and rude the new sound/floor guy is, and oh by the way this year we’re charging you $800 for him to park his truck all weekend. No. No to all of this. 

Today after much anticipation my scholarship recipients were notified by the outside group that is in charge of the program, and as they began to flood my email with registrations, I noticed an unpleasant pattern - while the majority of the people were the POC the scholarship was intended for, somehow a handful of middle class white people, most of whom have paid for and attended my event for years, managed to be awarded free passes. How did this even happen? I fought literally the entire day via FB messenger with the person in charge, who kept insisting that if the people reviewing the applications (all POC and/or members of the lgbtq community) approved these people then who am I to question it…but then admitted that the application never asked a person’s circumstances, the people reading the applications were discouraged from vetting any of these people, so basically it was just a “why I love swing dancing” essay contest in which apparently almost everyone who applied got accepted. What? This was not at all what I signed on for. The entire purpose of this scholarship program was to “increase diversity” and award people from underrepresented groups. This is not middle class straight able bodied white people. We’ve got plenty of those. The verbal gymnastics this person had to do to try to convince me I was wrong and he was right - the gaslighting, the sarcasm, the accusations - was just awful. I stuck to my guns, though, and kept repeating that if this program isn’t about bringing in underrepresented groups like it says it is then it’s not something I’m interested in continuing. In the meantime it directly affects me because several of these white recipients now have a free pass that otherwise have always paid - so I’m out at least $1000 on this fiasco, maybe more. I’m beside myself. I cannot believe how poorly this was run and put together, and how the application committee was given no guidance, apparently, other than pick people you like. What the hell. After going back and forth about this for about seven hours, all while buying groceries, cleaning the house, doing work, picking up kids, making them dinner, I now have a raging headache and just want to collapse. I got very little else done today. Amazing how much time gets wasted by stupid shit like this. 

Here are some pictures of where I wish I was right now. 

First day

The boys are back in school! It was the first time since fall of 2019 that things had some semblance of normalcy - no Daily Pass, no lining up socially distanced, no masks. The kids were super confused that they could just walk right in. There was a certain amount of complaining and dread leading up to today, but I was glad that in the car they were happily buzzing about where their rooms would be and hoping they’d be close to each other. They were bouncing off the walls this morning which says to me there was some excitement about getting the school year going. I’m not thrilled about getting up an hour earlier, but boy does it feel good to be back.

I found out at a particularly chaotic new parent meet up on Saturday that they were able to get enough workers for the after school program so the boys can stay after all. So they’ll be walking home at 4 instead of 2:30. Huzzah.

We all got our boosters on Saturday. I held both boys on my lap since they were both a little scared. We bribed them with $5 if they didn’t freak out, and it worked. It’s too late to protect them during these two first weeks of school, which is most likely when they’d get it, but I figured better late than never. Most parents at the meet up were commenting they hadn’t boosted their kids yet. I got my fourth shot hopefully in time to protect me during my event which I am privately referring to as “covidpalooza”. Oh, just wait until I slide my “masks optional” policy on to the website on Friday. I don’t expect all hell to break loose necessarily, but I’d be surprised if I didn’t get any push back or refund requests. It’s ok - it’s going to be that kind of year. Everyone wants something different from me but in the end I have to do what’s best for me and my event, and people who feel so unsafe that they want everyone around them to wear masks regardless of how immune they are because pretty much everyone caught this thing in the last few weeks, well, those people probably shouldn’t go to a four day indoor dance event right now. 

I have three more weeks to get my act together before the big moment. I feel pretty good - things are under control, I just have a lot of printouts to make this week, including things I’ve never had to learn before, like creating QR codes, and more digging through boxes that have been collecting dust for two years. I definitely have plenty to keep me busy for three full weeks. 

There was a massive storm out in the desert over the weekend; we watched it on the security cameras. Non-stop lightning and torrential rain for a couple of hours. Apparently we got a year’s worth of rain in one night. Neighbors in the local FB group said they’d been in the area for fifty years and never seen anything like it. The wash immediately behind the cabin was raging, but I don’t think any water got inside the place. It’s hard to tell. I’m more worried about the slab being compromised - this is a house built on sand, after all. I wanted to go out there and check on the place, but the roads were pretty washed out and we were too busy yesterday to drop everything and go. Honestly I could head out there while the kids are in school, and might just do that, if I hear the roads are passable again. I could do with a solo road trip.

Back to school-ish

We had the back to school informational zoom yesterday and it was a bit of a shit show. It started with the burning question on everyone’s mind - what about after school care? - and for that a couple of other schools were invited to the zoom to hear from the spokesperson for Beyond the Bell, the independent service that watches the kids on the schoolyard until 6 pm. BTB is always a bit of a mess, but especially was last year when they were chronically understaffed and we all just had to cross our fingers and hope it would all work out with one staff member per 50 kids. And for the most part it was fine…I think? It’s hard when you come from a generation where kids were regularly thrown to the wolves and told to just figure their own shit out…my afterschool program was wandering the streets of NYC and being subject to every gang of marauding local kids and/or dangerous sociopath or pervert I happened to encounter…but I digress.

So basically BTB said they do not have enough staff to accommodate everyone and will only accept kids who can commit to the full week and day, as in, not be picked up until nearly 6 pm. And they told us this days before school starts when all other options are full. The parents were APOPLECTIC. It was cringey listening to everyone tear this guy apart. Oh, how I know what it feels like to be the messenger! At the same time I was confused - if you’re a working parent, isn’t it better that your kid stay as long as possible…? They also said if they got more staff they would accept kids with more flexible schedules. Which I think is definitely possible; I’ve seen it happen before. They probably waited so long to tell us because they thought they could find staff and then just couldn’t. I may soon be facing my own staffing nightmare as irreplaceable members of my staff tell me the day my event starts that they just tested positive. Fun. 

At any rate I decided right then and there to not take up two spots we don’t need and just have the kids walk home right after school instead. Until they get this mess sorted out I don’t want to use something that’s just a luxury for us and could take away from people who desperately need it. The kids are fine with it. Now I just worry they’ll come home and sit on their iPads all night, which was 100% why I had them at BTB until 4 to begin with - to get them out playing with their friends. I’m also worried about extreme heat in the middle of the day for the next couple of months - they will probably call me to pick them up a lot. I know I need to come up with some kind of schedule - you need to read for this amount of time, no iPads before this time, etc etc. But right now I’m so overwhelmed with work that the idea of deciding on and attempting to implement things of this nature sounds awful. I get tired of being the nag that’s always having to make these kids do things they don’t want to do. I guess that’s just “parenting”, though, huh? At least with the extreme heat we’ll be experiencing for the next month it shouldn’t be too hard to convince the kids to jump in the pool after school every day. School, here we come!

Workity work work

I’m in the thick of it now. If this were birth it would be called active labor, and the actual weekend would be the pushing part. The good news for me is once the “baby” is born, unlike in real life, I’ll actually get some sleep and rest in the weeks after. Yay!

I find myself compulsively checking the cabin camera just to look at it because it instantly brings my blood pressure down just thinking about the desert. There was a massive rainstorm out there that washed out roads all through Mojave and Death Valley - a “thousand year storm” they called it, in which a year’s worth of rain fell in one hour. The H and I both watched it on our security cameras. It was wild. I watched the shipping container and expected it to slowly drift away, but it didn’t. The wash right behind our place was full and flowing for about 24 hours. I don’t think there was any damage to our place, but it’s hard to know for sure. I got the number of a highly recommended handyman out there from a FB group, but determined in a phone call that he’s too expensive for us. So, it’s back to waiting until the neighbor gets back in December. Sigh. At least we can get *some* camping in in the fall before it gets too cold at night. I have a trip planned for end of next month with tickets bought to an astronomy festival at a neighboring observatory. I’m counting the days.

In the meantime I’m engaged in complex constant decision making all day every day, which I’ve now learned is tough on our brains and was exacerbated by the pandemic. I find myself cranky and exhausted by the constant judgement calls. And I’m at that unpleasant part of the event where a) registrations are once again slow as molasses as I just raised the prices, and I don’t know if it’ll pick up again, and b) people are starting to have to cancel (thankfully normal stuff, not covid related), so that every day I’m getting about five refunds to one or two people signing up, which totally sucks. It’s normal and nothing to be concerned about, but…it sucks. The budget is, as always, spiraling out of control (I think I’ve agreed to at least $10,000 in unexpected extra expenses in the last two days) and I’m worried about money. I have no idea how this is all going to shake out. 

But one thing on my side is the fact that the event will happen, and I don’t have to worry about if the hotel will let me out of my contract or not since I’ve met my obligation, there will be income, people are excited about it, my staff is all in place, and in a blink of an eye it’ll be over. This time last year I was issuing refunds all day. This doesn’t feel better than that, but it is. And as far as covid stuff, everyone’s over it - I don’t get a feeling of much interest on either side; people are sick of talking about it and just want to get together and have fun, no matter what that looks like. I’m not as worried as I was about being sued or having some ugly confrontation at registration - I think both of those things are very unlikely at this point. If there’s one thing I know about event planning, it’s that the thing you think is going to be The Big Problem never actually is - it’s always some other thing you never could have anticipated. 

Boys are rounding out their final week at camp. Friday I have the annual fun of heading up to the school to look at the kids’ class lists to see which of their friends are in their classes; I have all their supplies and new backpacks; we’re ready to roll. 

Same same but different

The last two weeks were all about covid; this week has been all about work. Real, intense, hours-long-without-breaks work. Which, to be fair, is how most people live. Most people live in a state of constant exhaustion that I couldn’t even begin to contemplate. 

As had been promised by other covid sufferers, my symptoms pretty much disappeared by the end of last week. The fatigue vanished, as did the feeling that I need to “be careful” all the time. I got through my singing gig ok. I’m coughing a bit still, but no longer feel the compulsive urge to cough every time I open my mouth to talk. 

The kids gloriously returned to camp this week, and I hunkered down, doing the emotionally difficult work of delving into files and boxes that I hadn’t looked at since September of 2019, my last event. It was like looking through a ghost’s things. Who even was that pre-pandemic person? I don’t know her anymore. I don’t know the event anymore, either, but that will soon change as I slowly reacquaint myself. I’m trying really hard to get ahead of myself and do all the big projects now so I can relax in the last week or so…even while knowing this was always the goal and that goal was never met. I was always still up at 3 AM the night before the event printing t shirt vouchers and nightly guest lists and trying to pack. But all I can do right now is slowly and deliberately plug away at things, making each day a mix of customer service, long physical jobs (today was unwrapping dozens of trophies and painstakingly applying this year’s engraving plates over last year’s engraving plates - that took about three hours), complex computer-based work (today was two hours on the schedule - still not done), and research for things like costumes and QR generators. Then I pick up the kids and continue customer service and research well into the night. This is my life until September. 

As can be expected, I have a mix of feelings about being back in business - I’m glad normal routines have been reinstated, I’m glad I have an income again, I’m glad to be a relevant part of the community. But naturally I’m also scared of all the covid-related criticism I’m going to face, I’m scared of displeasing the most vocal people, and I’m scared of normal customer stuff that was really nice to not have to deal with for a while. I’m back, with everything that entails, good and bad.

We got the boys’ class assignments in the mail, and I was delighted that Bobby got the 5th grade teacher with the Mohawk and the PhD. I don’t know Theo’s new teacher. Sadly, Bobby’s awesome 3rd grade teacher has left the school after 25 years, so she’s not an option for Theo. I warned the boys the teacher crisis may get worse this year - last year on occasion they would have to cram in with another grade when a substitute couldn’t be found; I think with the mass exodus from the teaching profession plus everyone getting covid over and over, it could be a weird year; I’m preparing myself for some days or even weeks of kids not being able to be at school because there just isn’t enough staff for them. The good (?) news is, most pandemic restrictions have been dropped - masks, testing, and distancing are now gone, and finally my pet peeve was given the axe yesterday, the Daily Pass. I hope we can go back to Christmas pageants and Halloween festivals and all that other stuff that’s been gone for two years. I’m looking forward to some normal family life around here finally.