Three weeks out

The event is three weeks away and I’ve got the usual “oh my god how am I going to get all of this done” panic, with the knowledge that it will all get done, actually, like it always does. Friday I went out to the shed and poked around in last year’s boxes, which is always an odd time capsule. The boxes themselves were filthy, and it took me over two hours in the stifling heat to inventory and select the band t shirts which annoyed me to no end. I also discovered that a couple hundred dollars in unsold jackets got ruined by being placed in front of a window in a clear box, something I would have been mindful of but obviously whoever stacked that there didn’t think about. Sigh.

Right now the thing I had been worried about all year might actually, finally, be coming true, which is my sales have completely dried up since the price increase on the 1st, and I am now about 50 people behind last year, the biggest gap I’ve seen yet. I’m starting to think that prediction that I could lose 100-200 people because of Trump’s bullshit just might finally start happening in these last three weeks, despite being completely at par up until ten days ago. It’s mind blowing that there was zero indication of anything amiss until just now at the 11th hour, but here we are. Could it still turn around? Maybe, but that hasn’t been the case since the pandemic - usually the final month is pretty slow. I think there’s a chance I could break 1000, but that still puts me 100 people behind the last three years (and $30,000 less in revenue, plus the $30,000 extra I’m paying for the extra year, putting me $60,000 less than last year. Ugh). It’s been dead as a doornail for nearly two weeks; I think I’ve gotten maybe ten people? So I might have to accept that I’m going to lose a significant amount of people this year, and prepare for more as this country continues to go down the shitter. God, what does 2026 have in store for us?? I don’t even want to think about it.

We have three days at home with no school this week before the kids start school - tomorrow we’re spending the day at a waterpark (probably not a great idea since Mondays are busy for me - it’s going to be hard to turn off and relax), then hanging around at home, then school. Bobby still has to do one of his summer reading book reports, and I still have to get information about what they’re doing Thursday (Bobby’s classes, Theo’s teacher). I figure I’ll just send them in with a few supplies we have at home - notebooks, pens, pencils - and take it from there. Boy is this school start less stressful than last year!! Everyone is familiar with their environment, and we have a system in place for timely pickups (remember last year how I spent two hours each afternoon driving back and forth to pick them up? Omg!), so unlike last year I’m barely focused on their return to school. Weird how that changes.

I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I’m coming to realize I had some wrong ideas about parenting, as far as, how long I would actually be an involved parent. I think based on my own experience - remember, I was pretty much on my own at fourteen - I thought that once these kids are college-aged, I basically would never see them again. So I’ve been planning every vacation like it’s our last, and feeling like time is running out for us to exist as a family; but I’m starting to realize that that doesn’t have to be true. I mean, sure, I could cut them loose and just let them live private lives at a certain point, and some element of that is healthy and necessary. But certainly we can continue to do family trips well into their adulthood - why not? And with housing as it is and college as expensive as it is, there’s a very real possibility that they will both be living here a lot longer than just through high school. I don’t see any scenario in which either of these kids will be able to live in a dorm for four years; and moving out at all is going to be challenging. So as much as they’ll continue to grow and be independent and I’ll of course encourage that, it’s also not the late eighties/early nineties in which young adults can get a low-wage job and have their own apartments, not in LA, anyway. Not now. Maybe in five years if we overthrow this fascist regime, but I’m not going to hold my breath.