OH NO. I get there an hour early and there’s a huge line of at least 60-70 people, many of whom brought chairs and coolers and looked like they’d already been there for hours. The guy working at the front of the line was telling someone else that odds of getting in weren’t good, so I decided to cut my losses and go home and try the online system for the camp the boys went to in I think 2018 or 19. Their online system wasn’t up, and upon calling, they said to just come by, so I hurried over. This line wasn’t so bad - only about 10-15 people, and I had high hopes.
BUT. It took two and a half hours to get to sign up. Why it took so long, I have no idea. Slow system, they said. Each person seemed to take 15-20 minutes. In the meantime the online system seemed to be working sporadically, so people would drive up and say they had “just signed up online” (WHAT) and were just there to drop off paperwork. It was maddening. I honestly didn’t know what I was going to do if I finally got to the head of the line only to find out they just sold out. I kept trying the system on my phone, but it continually crashed, said things were unavailable, made me go through endless “prove you’re not a bot” tests then only to tell me I couldn’t select things. This went on for hours. By the time I finally made it to the window, I was a nervous wreck. The phone was ringing off the hook and the beleaguered parks & rec worker had to keep pausing to answer it, telling other panicked parents to come by but spots were filling up fast. People in line had friends or partners at home trying on their computers, and one by one they dropped off as they got spots while I still waited. Oh, it was infuriating!!
Long story short, we did get in and all is well. And the fact that this particular camp, which was very under-attended five or six years ago and not very well run, is now suddenly so popular, says to me maybe they’ve improved. It’s crazy when even your “last resort” is still this stressful to get into.
Sometimes when you get so focused on “getting” a thing like this, you get tunnel vision and forget to evaluate if it’s even worth it. Do the kids even want to go to this, or any, camp? I haven’t even told them about it because if they express the slightest negativity about it I know I’m going to lose my mind. But there’s also the fact that, of course these kids don’t want to do anything but play video games. Their ideal summer is staying in pyjamas, not brushing their teeth, eating ice cream and playing Gorilla Tag on their VRs every day. Do they really get to choose that as their summer? Of course not. So off to camp they go, but I have a feeling that Bobby, at least, is kind of over it. Not many older kids go to these camps - they’re really for the 5-7 year olds - so there may not be many kids their age to play with (which is where the eagle rock camp was better for them). I just don’t know. It’s like, I should feel happy and relieved and grateful that I pulled off the impossible and got cheap childcare for two kids for the whole month before school starts (and right when I need to focus and work the most), and I am, but I’m also kind of ambivalent. This doesn’t solve the problem of what the heck I’m going to do next year when B is 13 and too old - try to convince him to do a CIT program? Make him do a CIT program whether he wants to or not? Let him malinger at home while Theo still goes by himself? Let both kids malinger at home? I know it’s a year away so I really shouldn’t be even worrying about it, but I’m going to have to figure it out before next spring. Now that I know how completely nuts the parks & rec summer camp sign ups have become, I know how much more hyper vigilant I’m going to have to be now. The days of strolling by the day camp opens to register your kid are long gone.
In other news, we had a lovely and HOT weekend in the desert. It was mid-high 90s, which is actually unusual for April. I got my ass out of bed on Saturday to do yoga at the Palms, which was great, and the rest of the time read hundreds of pages of various books (Welcome to Wonder Valley and Nomadland) sitting in the chair hammocks, and helped set up our shower with the water heater I bought three years ago.
Just for last weekend we had it set up on the east side of the house, but will try to build something more permanent along the side of the shipping container. I have to say, having a hot shower was a revelation out there.
Time is running out before it’s no-go time until late September or October - we can really only manage two more weekends before we’re out for the season. I don’t know if we can get a shower structure built in that time.
Because of the hot days, the nights were incredible - Saturday we had a nice fire and lay in the hammocks and it was warm and delightful. That’s what being out there is all about. I wish we didn’t have such a tiny window each spring and fall for good weather, but at least now we know that with insulation the place stays warm in the winter, so even 40° nights are easily tolerable without any heating at all. The H says he still wants to go in the summer, but he was wilting even in the 91-95° heat, and summers can be 110-120° pretty consistently for months. That’s not manageable. Even if we had AC, what the hell would we do all day? Sit around, bored, in a tiny box? What’s the point? Also, my band is on for every Sunday at Knott’s all summer again, so weekend trips are pretty much out.
Tonight I’m going to try a new Y in DTLA to try a “power yoga” class. I’m not really up to it - I’m fasting and on my period and generally out of sorts - but maybe I need the distraction, and I’ve already dealt with uncomfortable, triggering things today so might as well just pile on one more new, vaguely threatening experience.
No comments:
Post a Comment