April ennui

I’m experiencing my usual April ennui - it’s sort of an in-between time, when the major holidays are behind us but summer is still months away. Now it’s just the weeks plodding along until the kids graduate. Being the anxious person I am, with my eldest headed to high school in August, I have all kinds of thoughts that I’m sure are common right now:

What do we do about college? Despite saving vigilantly, we probably will end up with a third to a half of what they’ll actually need if they attend four year schools. I don’t want them starting their lives in debt. And all the research and work to figure out how to work the system is going to fall solely on me. Not to mention helping choose careers and colleges at all (I’m assuming - I don’t really know what role high school guidance counselors play at this point). And now every move you make as a young person centers around what impact AI will have on your career plans.

Where will these kids live? They certainly can’t afford to live in LA. Will they just live with us forever? Will I, in fact, end up converting the shed into a garçonniere for one or both of them to live well into their adulthood? 

Will they have relationships? Will they find careers they enjoy? Will they have children? Will they have good lives? I feel like I struggled so much as a young person and was so unhappy so much of the time - but again, I was feral. I was entirely on my own with no family support and no pathway to achieving my dreams, not to mention broke and isolated and bored. Will it be different for them? Will they go to college and have friends and goals and hope for the future? Despite the hope that being born under Obama brought, they’ve now lived their entire lives under Trump (or the threat of Trump), and although I expect an unraveling in the next few years, it’s going to be slow and not at all guaranteed. The world will never be as good as it could have, should have been. They’ve been robbed. And yet I have to keep this thought to myself lest they be plunged into despair. 

Right now, neither kid knows what they want to do, neither kid has any interest in anything except video games. It’s depressing, but I also don’t know what to do about it - you can introduce musical instruments and cooking and sports as much as you want, but if they’re not interested, they’re not interested. How much of their lack of interest is my fault and how much is normal for kids this age in this time, I don’t know. They still seem to be happy kids who have lots of friends and get good grades and the teachers all love, so I must be doing something right??? 

My job is to get them to school on time, make sure they do their homework, make sure they brush their teeth and shower, make sure they get to the dentist and doctor, plot out our vacations, sign permission slips, plan holidays and birthdays and presents. Theo will need a computer this year for school; next year he’ll get a phone. Starting next year I’m going to have to educate myself about college - how to apply, where to apply, how to fund it, how the California UC system works. The one thing they have on their side is plummeting birth rates - I don’t know for sure, but I’m guessing a lot fewer kids will be applying for college in 2029 than there were ten years ago or even today. 

I’m in the autumn of my life - suddenly all my ambition is gone; I have zero interest in trying to get a new business off the ground or start a new hobby or do anything, really, except just count down til I don’t have to do my event anymore and can just live off my paltry savings and social security, a reality that’s only sixteen (or less) years away. Right now the possibility of even being able to run sixteen more events is looking pretty grim - attendance is lagging, hotel room booking is lagging (still not sold out and it’s almost May - in previous years I was sold out in January or February). I’m preparing for more losses this year, and I’ll squeeze by thanks to my giant tax return - but that’s not sustainable. If I keep losing year after year I’m in big trouble. Thankfully I appear to have a decent contract person at the hotel with whom I’ve been working to implement some protections in future contracts, ie, the ability to downsize the event without penalty and with late notice, not years in advance where I can’t possibly predict what’s going to happen. The fact that the big Swedish camp has been going since the 80s and has survived economic trends and social trends and all sorts of horrific political upheaval in our scene, far worse than I’ve experienced, gives me hope. Events don’t typically die unless the people in charge choose to kill them, especially not established beloved ones like mine. But, adjustments may have to be made, mainly, dropping the Thursday night and returning to our old format, which would be a huge bummer but may be necessary if I lose people again this year and then again in 2027. At that point I’ll have no choice. 

And in the middle of all this, in the next four to five years, I’ll have kids going to and graduating from high school, and getting on with their lives, and quite possibly moving out. I can’t fathom what it will be like to have kids that are out on their own and you don’t hear from them for weeks or even months…and yet, if all goes well, this is exactly where I’ll be in just a few years. I’m glad I have other things in my life, mainly, the dance community, otherwise I don’t know what the hell I’d do without the comfortable routine of taking care of kids. No matter what I’ll be an emotional wreck, this is certain. 

I went to the desert by myself last weekend because the friend that was supposed to join me got sick. Honestly, it was boring and lonely. I’m so used to being constantly around people that I don’t like being alone anymore. When you’re surrounded by people you long to just read quietly and cook for yourself and have some quiet, but then when you get all that it just sort of feels hollow. But I also know it really is what you’re used to - years from now when the H is gone and the kids are gone and I am in fact permanently on my own for the rest of my life (unless I meet another man, which is unlikely), it’ll be a lot easier to lean into it and make the most of it like I did in my thirties - joining clubs and traveling and trying new things. It’s sad and somewhat alarming to think of our desert place as not being practical once the H goes. So much of what happens out there depends on his brute strength and ability to fix things, and things need fixing pretty much all of the time. If the kids aren’t interested in keeping it, it may have to be sold, and nobody would want a place like that unless they were slightly crazy. One thing that happened while I was out there was the neighbor with all the shipping containers texted me that he wants to sell and do we want it. My first instinct was YES so that we don’t end up with some nightmare neighbor, but then I realized it would have to be a cash sale (there’s no mortgages for places like that) and I had a local realtor come by and assess the place, and his thought was everything on it plus the land is worth about $50,000 but honestly it’s not really worth anything to anybody. It’s just a mess of half-finished projects - even the little cabin they built is completely unfinished, just studs like it was two years ago. And that’s my main feeling about it - we don’t need any of that, and it’s just more money and headaches right when we’re done with that phase. It can’t be lived in or rented. It is, as the realtor said, valueless. So I passed, and we’ll see if he actually lists it or gets any takers. Personally I think the best case scenario would be if he took all the crap away that he hauled out there and abandoned the place, leaving it the way it was when we moved in, with a nice unobstructed sunset view. I think a lot of people are like him, they find places in the desert and have high hopes and put in a ton of work, but they all lose interest when they find out how inhospitable it really is out there. It’s the story of Wonder Valley, really - all the LA hopefuls who bought cheap 5 acre plots in the 50s, built tiny cabins, used them for a generation of target practice and tortoise chasing, then the kids had no interest and let the places rot. That could be the fate of our little place, too. 

Back on the app

After some fiddling around, I was able to get back on the old blog app on my phone and upload photos for the boys’ birthdays, yay! So I’m back in business. I felt disincentivized to blog without being able to share photos, especially when there’s trips or milestones involved. Glad that’s been resolved.

Last week was our spring break trip, which was a bit of a throwback to our pandemic travel days. We spent two nights in an Airbnb trailer in Bombay Beach and revisited some of that area that I think we last saw in 2021 or ‘22 - Salvation Mountain, East Jesus. And added on some things we missed last time along the south western tip of the Salton Sea such as the “mud volcanoes” (accessed next to a geothermal plant which involved some mild trespassing) and searching for some more geothermal pools out in the marshlands which we never did find. We finally got a meal at the Ski Inn (the only restaurant for miles). We also visited Shield’s Date Shakes in Indio and Slowjamastan (a self-declared sovereign nation in the desert) and did a hike in Anza-Borrego called The Slot. Here are some shots from that first two days:

Then we headed north to our cabin and hiked a gnarly trail called The Ladders which took nearly all day - slot canyons, bouldering, and an encounter with a baby rattler, but we survived! 

By the time we got to our cabin late Wednesday we were pretty tuckered out - and we were dealing with some pretty extreme winds which made us not want to do anything. I got us to go to the Mojave National Preserve for some sand boarding, but the winds were too intense and then Theo announced he had to poop, so we had no choice but to head back to the parking area and give up. I spent a small fortune on a two hour soak in a hot tub at a small hot spring resort about five minutes from our place that was, in my opinion, worth every penny.

Saturday we went to see Gary Numan at Pappy & Harriet’s (which was so awesome!) and drove home after.

Despite a little flailing around when we got to the cabin and not really having much to do, I thought it was a swell trip. So much so that I’ve been pretty sluggish and disoriented ever since I got back. It definitely didn’t help that Monday morning I had to get up at the crack of dawn to go line up to register the kids for summer camp. I was able to get Theo in, but apparently since Bobby is a CIT there’s now a separate interview and training process that he’ll have to go through before he’s admitted, so that still hangs in the balance. Then yesterday we were all bracing ourselves for nuclear war. So, needless to say, I’ve been a bit distracted!

Bobby is fourteen

Bobby is fourteen! The same age I was when my mother remarried and I went to live in the husband’s old studio apartment in the East Village with my 24-year-old sister while he moved in with my mother. To be fair, I was a few months shy of fifteen, so for Bobby it would be him this December. I’m sure he’ll be more mature by then, but STILL. Probably not my mother’s best parenting moment (as much as I, personally, loved it).

I start to feel bad for Bobby for having the last of the three March birthdays - it’s hard to keep up the enthusiasm after doing the dinner out/cake/presents three times in a row. Since this was the one I didn’t plan, it was probably my least favorite - the H selected a Korean BBQ place (or rather, his Chat GPT did) and it wasn’t very good; mostly empty, tiny salad bar, and nothing except chewy, unpleasant meat (the kids were not into it). All this for $200. I mostly ate white rice, wilted lettuce, and an egg soufflé thing I had in Korea (at least I got some protein). Bobby selected a cheesecake for his birthday and I got him an Aphex Twin shirt (in addition to the mountain bike). And that was that.

What is Bobby like, at fourteen? Introverted, rarely animated unless he’s on his VR playing with other kids. There are days I barely get a thumbs up from him. Sometimes he can be cranky, at which point I just leave him be. I don’t know the science behind it, but I’m pretty sure his true personality is hiding under the young teenager-ness that was all of us at one point and someday he’ll “come back to me”, as it were. He’s just been temporarily hijacked, and my job is just to be understanding and ride it out. 

It’s hard to imagine Theo, who’s so chatty and extroverted, becoming like this; he may never. I think puberty manifests in a variety of ways and probably bounces off existing characteristics. Bobby was always on the shy side; Theo never was. I’ve always been romantic and emotional; puberty launched those tendencies into the stratosphere for me.

The H gets frustrated that Bobby doesn’t “open up” and treats it like a problem to be solved - I feel like this is just who Bobby is and he has a right to privacy. My mother also bemoaned my shyness - mostly because it completely ruined my young child acting career - and it drove me crazy how much she wouldn’t just let me be. So I’m triggered by this dynamic between them. Personally I think it’s ridiculous to expect your teenager to come to you with all their problems and act as though you’re their best friend. They should know they CAN come to you and that you’re a safe space, but beyond that, you need to back off and just let them be. Bobby’s not depressed, has friends, and does well in school. I don’t see a problem here. 

Today was the final day of school until April 6th, and boy am I excited to not have to drag my ass out of bed for a while. Today the boys’ rec center camp announced it’s opening the day school resumes. I’m going to ask the H to take them to school that morning so I can go line up; last year I was there shortly after 8 and was almost the last to get a spot. It seems these camps get more and more popular every year. At twelve, this is Theo’s last chance to be an actual camper. Oddly enough, of the many options I gave them for the summer, the only thing they wanted to do was this camp. They were so meh about their sleepaway camp that I decided despite having put down deposits I’m going to cancel. I feel like that camp served its purpose, and there’s no need to shell out that amount of money for something neither of them really care about. They didn’t care for the volunteer camp, either, so the heck with it. I don’t love the idea of these kids malingering all summer at this rec center camp, but as of now I don’t see any other options. I figure I won’t start them until after July 4. This is, of course, assuming I even get spots.

I was thinking since the kids will have three or so weeks at home, I should come up with a plan for screen time. It’s one thing to hang out on a screen for a few hours when we’re all doing that just killing time until we have something to do, but day after day of that just won’t fly. They HAVE to do something else. So I think we need to have a family meeting to come up with a plan - how much time per day is acceptable, other things they can do, and what times. The idea of having to police them - or entertain them - all day during the summer when I’m at my busiest doesn’t thrill me, but I see the writing on the wall as far as our summer camp days being behind us, so it’s better to start setting a standard now. Pretty soon - maybe even next summer - there won’t really be any place for Bobby to go, unless I find some sort of summer-long CIT situation for him, or summer job, or something like that. I keep an eye out and always ask my local mom groups, but rarely get any helpful information. It definitely explains why my teenaged summers consisted of just sitting at home watching tv twelve hours a day until it was time to go back to school. Or wandering the streets with other poor kids who’s parents couldn’t afford to whisk them off to Europe or the Hamptons all summer. There just aren’t great options for younger teenaged boys, especially ones who aren’t into sports. 

I got the news that it’s going to cost between $30,000 and $50,000 to repair my collapsing garage - something I’ve been delaying for 25 years but now has reached a breaking point (literally). So every penny I can save, helps (ie not spending on sleepaway camp). How am I going to pay for this? I don’t know, really - my tax refund will cover some of it, but of course I was expecting to need that money for basic expenses, not some huge expensive project like this. I might have to use up my business line of credit. Welp. It was fun being debt-free for a while.