52

Today I am 52. Although, to be fair, I’ve been calling myself 52 for some weeks now, because why not. It’s funny, the thing I think about most for this age is menopause, but that’s not happening for me yet. Still having periods, although irregular now, and zero symptoms other than disrupted sleep and a general low level irritability which could better be attributed to living in Trump’s America. I’m well aware of the potential hell bearing down on me in the next few years, though, and I’m very much not looking forward to that. But for now? Still flowin’.

I returned from Korea yesterday, with lessons learned for the future (this event says they want us back). I was off my international travel game - forgot to bring snacks or a backup phone battery, both of which would have made my visit a lot more enjoyable. This trip was different from our last few in that the event was very different - on Jeju island, rather than in Seoul, and it was a festival with many other bands, not a small local event focused only on us. Because it was a festival set up, it was a lot like Munich back in February - lots of sitting around bored and then frantically setting up and breaking down multiple times a night. When you share a stage with other bands, it means your “gig time” is much longer than a night of three consecutive sets - say, five hours vs eight or ten. On Saturday we had an epic ten hour day with a very complicated and messy beach set up in the rain; I had diarrhea all day, and a shitty dinner of boiled spinach and white rice, and was just miserable. The weather didn’t cooperate, was cold and rainy, so despite being right on the beach I never got to enjoy it (I went for a little walk on the first day when it was sunny for a couple of hours, but that was it), and although the organizers were very kind and accommodating of my being a vegetarian, I mostly just ate rice and vegetables and sugary things, and had to endure meat juice from Korean bbq places splattering on my clothes pretty much every night. I’m not going to say it was a bad trip - a free trip to Korea is a free trip to Korea - but it was very physically demanding, and I was glad when it was over. 

I came home to some bad news and some very good news. The bad news is, I’m not doing well financially. My event sales have been slow, and the refund requests have gotten so out of hand that I’m considering a “no refund” policy going forward. Six weeks out, I can say with much chagrin that I will not have better attendance this year - in fact, I’ve fallen behind now. Which sucks, and puts a lot of things in jeopardy. I might try to cancel the expansion of a day, going forward. I just don’t think I can afford it. I haven’t announced it, and I’m pretty sure I could get the hotel to take it out of my contract if I asked. I’ll wait another month to see how things stand, but right now I’d be crazy to take on another $20,000 in expenses with no real way to recoup that money (I can’t realistically raise prices enough). I may, once again, find myself in a period of contraction, not expansion. But I won’t know for sure for about a month. 

The very good news, however, is so good that I haven’t really been able to wrap my mind around what a relief it is. My covid grant is officially no longer “under review”. Right before getting on the plane, I got an email from the SBA saying I had an “action item” on the website, with instructions on how to upload documents. I couldn’t log on to see exactly what it was, but it didn’t look good. So I had to spend the entire 12 hour flight stressing out about it until I could get home and get on my computer. But, much to my delight, it was just a letter thanking me for sending the information they asked, and telling me I’m no longer under review. I cried. This has been hanging over me for, what, a year and a half? Five years, if you consider when I first applied and worried I might end up in a situation like this. I won’t really exhale until I do the closeout documents - it ain’t over yet - but I do think this means I’m officially off the hook. Happy birthday to me!!

Came home to the boys of course both looking like teenagers. They had a good time at their sleepaway camp, and the start of the rec center camp has gone well, although, as I suspected, they are the only older kids there. It makes me sad that these charming little local camps are now in our rear view mirror. I really enjoyed these summers of little city camps. I could still look into CIT programs for Bobby - he did say he was interested - although a year from now he may change his mind. Anyway, that’s a problem for another day.

Today I’m going to catch up on work and rest and enjoy the quiet of an empty house, later we’ll go to dinner, and then tomorrow my diet is back on.