First crutches

We were supposed to be in the desert this weekend, but early yesterday I got a call from Theo’s school that he had landed badly on his ankle playing basketball and was unable to walk. I went to pick him up, went to the In-N-Out drive through, then set him up on the couch with an ice pack and pillows under his foot. I had offered to give him a piggy back up the three flights of stairs to our house, but he demurred. When the H got home he became convinced he needed to go to urgent care, so he rushed him over just minutes before they closed. Thankfully, nothing is broken or fractured. But he does have to stay off of it and was issued crutches. I’m surprised it took this long in my boy journey to get to injuries and crutches, but here we are. 

I don’t know how long he’s supposed to stay on them - as long as he wants, I guess - but it’s clear we’ll have several days of school at least in this condition. It didn’t really dawn on me how many things will have to shift in order to make our lives work - the privilege of the able bodied, eh? So I realized we’ll have to leave earlier for school, since getting him down three flights of stairs to the car and getting him into the car with crutches is going to be a production, not to mention getting him out of the car and set up to get into school. Then I can’t ask him to walk to the library after school, so I have to pick him up right as school is ending and make sure I’m right in front so he doesn’t have to go far. Then get Bobby an hour later. He’s also supposed to start his soccer club on Thursday which obviously can’t happen. It’s going to be a hell of a week. 

In the meantime, I have my tax appointment Monday, which I hope will deliver me a big fat refund for how much I spent and how little I made. I’m looking at this as significant income even though it’s just my own money coming back at me.

I’m not sorry about missing the desert this weekend - the overnight temperatures were below freezing and daytime would have been in the 50s only, whereas next weekend is going to be gorgeous in the 70s and 80s. And then we can go again the weekend after for the big car show up in Amboy. I’m determined to utilize every weekend possible until we get back to no-go temperatures this summer. We only have a couple of good months left. 

I hope Theo heals well - he’s not in pain, really, just swollen and not able to put any weight on it. He’s such an active kid, it’s going to be tough for him to be so incapacitated. 

My photos still aren’t working, sadly, and I don’t know how to fix it. When I try to upload my Google Photos it just says there’s a problem and to try again later. Maybe if I try from my computer rather than my phone? Who knows. 

Mid-February updates

Theo went on his 6th grade trip to Catalina this week, which meant one crazy day of getting up at 5:30 AM to drop him at school with his suitcase, then returning home to get Bobby up and take him to school, then three days with no Theo. Taking just Bobby to school gave me an interesting window into what our lives will be like as of August - once, assuming, both boys are at the same school, which starts a half hour later than Theo’s current school. We drove a completely different route and got to leave about 15 minutes later. We find out sometime next month if Theo has FINALLY been granted a spot in the gifted program. I’m honestly going to be pretty pissed if he hasn’t. 

Theo seemed kind of “meh” about the Catalina camp - he said he enjoyed last year’s Astro camp more. But I’ve found he can be pretty fickle; one disappointing mac and cheese dinner in the mess hall and all of a sudden the whole trip is a drag.

I have to admit, the growing international horror at the slow unveiling of the **stein files at the same time as my youngest child being far away and unreachable this week was tough on my nervous system; I had quite a bit of anxiety about him being gone and clung to the occasional updates from staff members. I can’t imagine what survivors of sexual assault must be going through right now with all of this triggering shit constantly in the media, with (currently) no justice or resolution. It must be unbearable. 

I never heard anything from my credit card processing company - they deposited my money and that was that. Could it be I’m off the hook…? For now. So that’s a huge relief. Unfortunately the far worse problem, that of how to convince the hotel to reduce my contractually-agreed to room guarantee, is still pending. This has been dragging on for weeks now and I’d REALLY like it to be resolved. It’s very much the difference between making it through this year with enough money to live on or not.

The H and I both have had quite the medical extravaganza lately. He’s been utilizing his new insurance to have all kinds of tests done - he had a chest CAT scan on Wednesday to check his lungs, waiting on results. That’s a big one, because it could go one of many ways - the worst of course being they discover the thing that’s going to kill him; either that or they discover something that can still be treated that hopefully scares him out of smoking; or the sort of not-great possibility that everything looks just fine so he’s emboldened to keep smoking. For me, I had a Mohs surgery yesterday for this small, flaky skin cancer that took up residence right next to my right nostril a few months ago. I now have a giant dime-sized crater on my face that will need to be treated and bandaged every day for a month, very inconveniently right where I breathe and eat, so trying to keep a bandage on has already proved to be very difficult. I’m trying not to be too vain about it - everyone gets scars in this life - but it is a little difficult to picture this thing healing without being pretty disfiguring. It’s just such a drag that I have to constantly go through this. A friend recommended this chemotherapy cream that apparently you just rub on your skin periodically to attack early cancerous cells; I had never heard of this, so I’ll try to get a prescription next time I go in. 

For now, I’m enjoying the quiet after the storm - other than finalizing my teaching lineup and doing my taxes in two weeks, there’s very little to do on my event right now. I decided to shelve my Colorado summer road trip plans for a trip to Oahu instead and fully booked that, based on the fact that free flights and lodging will make it the most economical option, and honestly a summer Hawaii trip sounds like just what the doctor ordered right now. 

Sand surfing

For some reason I’m not able to upload photos anymore - I’ll have to try to fix this. So you’ll just have to take it from me that we had a blast sand surfing in the Kelso dunes in the Mojave National Preserve this weekend.

I had acquired a free kids’ snowboard through my Buy Nothing group as a Christmas present for the kids with the intention of modifying it for sand surfing. The H was highly skeptical, but he had to admit it worked out great - after removing part of the bindings, sanding it a bit, and using board wax before every run, it worked perfectly. And now that we’ve done it once, we know what to do and bring - I definitely needed a back pack, we needed more water, and after this time scrambling our way all the way to the top of the highest peak just for fun, we won’t be doing that again since it left everyone too exhausted to do any more boarding. We can also get a second board for cheap or free so each kid can have their own. It’s a bit of a hike - about a mile and a half from the parking area. But right when we got there a large group left leaving us the entire dunes to ourselves for most of the day - it was really glorious. I’m so glad we found another way to enjoy the outdoors out there. We won’t be able to go for long - it gets up to 120° at times - but right now is prime time, so I want to take full advantage every time we go.

The big news is my price increase and contest opening happened last night, and, despite my fears, it went really well. I made more money than last year (thanks to my higher prices) and currently have a few more people than I did at this point last year, which I did not expect. It’s so early that it means nothing - I could still slip behind and lose the 100 people I had predicted - but the fact that I’m not behind now is very heartening indeed. For how much more this year is going to cost, it’s pretty scary - I’m probably facing $10,000-$15,000 more in my hotel bill, plus about $4000 more to the sound guy. Where that extra $20,000 is going to come from I have no idea, especially if I lose people. But there’s a chance my numbers could settle at last year’s levels and I can work with that. 

I still have the spectre of my credit card company possibly withholding my funds, which would be catastrophic. I have not heard from them since I submitted the asked for paperwork on Monday. If I can just make it to Wednesday, I’ll get all the money I made this weekend and really don’t have to worry. But if they take that and hold it until after the event, I have a big problem. So there’s still that stress.

I also don’t know what’s going to happen with my room allocation at the hotel which could also be catastrophic if it doesn’t go my way. I’ll need to submit a request this week (already did this more than a week ago but apparently I have to do it again) and hopefully they’ll work with me. 

So I’m not out of the woods yet, but the first big hurdle, the Feb 1st stuff, is done and went better than expected. Hopefully in a few days the other scary things will resolve in my favor, too.