Final week

You know when you get close to your weather app being able to predict the forecast during your event that your event is CLOSE. Here we are with just one (full) week left and one weekend before we pack up the truck on Wednesday and head out. 

I think this time for me is similar to those final weeks of pregnancy where thoughts of the birth are so constant and overwhelming that it’s truly exhausting being in your brain and you want nothing more than it being over so you can think about something else for a change. I can’t wait to start plotting out my fall garden, getting back to the desert, finalizing our Christmas break road trip, things like that. Right now I’m so inundated with event thoughts that I swear I can smell the hotel in my nostrils every day when I wake up. This of course leads to unwanted random shoots of adrenaline which then lead to diarrhea which then leads to inflamed hemorrhoids. Good times.

Last week on Monday morning I was made aware of an anonymous Reddit post accusing one of my volunteers of sexual assault (not at my event and not naming my event, but she - yes, she - works at a local dance studio). Unfortunately my safe spaces person who is tasked with investigating these things for both me and the studio has a personal beef against the person being accused, so it was a messy week of multiple messenger groups talking about this and not loving how she was handling it, and thereby constant interruptions. At the exact same time I became the subject of a bizarre series of harassing emails, which after ANOTHER investigation we determined to be from a guy I had banned. Could both be from the same person? Possibly, but we’ll probably never know for sure. We had to just drop the Reddit post investigation since all leads led nowhere, which also means nothing could be proven, which means I invited the accused person to stay on the volunteer staff, which several people were unhappy about and let me know how unhappy they were. This is my life now. All I can say is, something fucked up happens every year, and if this is it and we got it out of our system before the event even starts, then, great.

The boys got through their first full week of school - Bobby seems not thrilled with it all; he has retreated into himself a great deal and barely talks to us (normal?) but Theo is quite the chatterbox who loves to tell me every detail of everything that happened every day. I’m glad he chose horticulture as his elective - hopefully he can teach me some skills since I’m out here trying to learn from Facebook reels.

It is late August. Everything is dry as hell and it is relentlessly hot. Yesterday I got a $1000 bill for water & power - twice what it was this spring - no doubt from the double whammy of running the AC constantly and watering my surviving plants. But everything is also mostly fixed - my garage wall repair is completed and somehow paid for, I have my car back, the desert cameras are back after a reboot (they were inconsistently on or off for weeks), and our pool valves have been repaired (although we’ll need a new pump soon). 

This week I have a lot of appointments and meetings which is going to make it difficult to be home and do my work, which stresses me out a bit, but at least I can say with confidence that at this moment things are in order, and I have one more weekend without many plans to catch up just in case I need it. 

Here’s a pic of us from a big music festival yesterday. Unfortunately I got very sick from the shitty food and extreme heat and lay on the ground for most of it, but was able to rally for LCD Soundsystem who I was mostly there to see, and they were fantastic. 

First day of 7th and 9th grade

Today was the first day of school, and we got up far too early and then had to wait around until an appropriate time to leave. I of course hardly slept at all, fearing oversleeping and also dealing with the chaos of one of my instructors asking for a bunch of stuff at 10 pm that I will have to organize. 

But for the first time I got to watch the kids walk into their jr/sr high together, and that’s what they’ll be doing for the next four years. It’ll take a while to get the rhythm of when to leave/where to drop them and pick them up. I’m all discombobulated between being in a rental car that reeks of cheap cologne and this new daily routine.

The report was Bobby said his first day was “mid”, mostly railing about increasing restrictions on screen time at school and being generally unimpressed by everything that happened, while Theo seemed pretty thrilled. I’m hoping this means the best case scenario where he really steps up and starts to shine. At least he seems happy and excited about it, and that’s a good thing. I don’t know if this is a puberty vs pre-puberty thing; we’ll see what Theo’s like in two years.

Today I had a ton of complicated work and check-in phone calls with various staff for my event, all the things I had been delaying while the kids were still at home this week. Now I really have to buckle in and tie up all the loose ends I’ve been letting hang for months. 

Here are the boys on their first morning and then at the traditional post-first day ice cream stop:

About to start

All week I was in this weird, sad nostalgia mode about the kids’ final week of camp, realizing it might be the last time we ever go there, to the point of almost being in tears at moments. What’s up with that? First of all, they may both be back next year as CITs, and Theo could be a CIT for three years. But even if they have no interest in this camp again - why does this hit so hard for me?

I think that when your kids are this age, you really feel that clock ticking down, and it’s scary. It feels like everything is just a series of lasts. The other night in yoga I suddenly had this image of the photo of them sitting in the cowboy tub in the desert and realized they’d never be that little again and found myself tearing up.

When they’re little and every day is such a struggle, you long for these easy days of parenting big kids. And I promised myself I would never forget how hard those years were and start romanticizing them, and I will keep that promise. But still - my parenting days are more than half over - 3/4, really - and I’m sad about that. 

I had to explain to a friend without kids how sad every start and end of the school year is now - it used to be a happy time, but now it’s tinged with a little sadness. I told her these milestones just mean your kids are growing up. As much as I feel I might be getting a little over the top with this stuff, I also know I’m not alone - all of us parents constantly marvel at how big our kids have gotten and how we’re dreading high school graduations. Everyone has the same fears about affording college and hoping our kids can launch into their lives and not just be 30 smoking weed and playing video games in their childhood bedrooms. These are our concerns at this age.

Last night I picked the boys up from their summer camp Disneyland field trip at 9 pm and that was the end of that - I asked them to wash their camp shirts one last time and then I’d cut them up for rags (how symbolic). We have a fairly leisurely weekend, then Theo has school orientation on Monday and we start to kick into gear - Bobby needs new giant pants, I need to sort out Theo’s too-small clothes, find school supplies around the house, clean up their room a little (if not now, when?), and make sure Theo gets the final two thirds of his summer book report done before school starts. Then school on Wednesday, and I am officially back on school schedule. As much as I’m dreading getting up early, I’m also looking forward to getting back to my old exercise classes and having an extra hour in the day to hike before it gets hot, go to my freeway protest, etc etc. 

I feel like once they’re solidly back in school I can relax a little and stop feeling all this saudades - I’m a little worried about Theo’s transition to junior high, like any parent would be, so that’s giving some anxiety too. When I feel like he’s gotten the program and doing ok I can exhale a little. We won’t have a transition like this again until college. Hopefully it’ll be smooth sailing for a while.

Final week of “summer”

There’s that “end of summer” feeling in the air, which is very incongruous in Los Angeles - for us, summer weather continues for three more months. But yet, kids are back in school in just a week, so summer is, in fact, over. We’re currently experiencing The Big Bake - once the pacific marine layer at last burns off by mid-late July, now it’s just hot, hot, hot from sun up to sun down. High eighties to triple digits or at least mid-90s every day. Personally, I like the heat, except for it makes my necessary hikes impossible, and for me is a harbinger of my event coming up, with attendant anxiety. But I love the warm evenings and smell of the baked earth. Also getting to use the pool, and actually swim in the ocean, which we did yesterday. I do love summer even though my relationship with it is complicated.

I got through my anxious week of price increases and cut-offs ok - my numbers are still lagging, of course, but people are still signing up. I know better than to hope for some last minute miracle - with my high prices and the hotel sold out, there’s not going to be some last minute rush; there never is these days - but if people continue to trickle in even at half the rate of last year, I’ll have just enough to pay everyone. Then I live off of the weekend ticket sales, and the price increase on Feb 1, and I continue to kick the can of despair down the road until next spring and summer. And we may be living in a very different world by then, with the midterms over and the whole political landscape changed. But barring any emergencies, I’ll survive this year. It’s sad that I’m reduced from thriving to barely surviving, but here we are. 

Last week of camp, which involves me making lunches every day, a day off for a water park trip with friends, and a field trip to Disneyland on Friday for the boys. Then next week two days at home before school starts. They both have book reports due upon starting school, a fiction and non-fiction book each. Bobby is finishing up his second report; Theo is only halfway through his second book. I’m going to have to up his reading time from 45 minutes to an hour each night just to maybe get it done in time. I realized our current schedule, apart from being an hour later in the morning, is very similar to where we’ll be when they’re in school - 1/2 hour to get ready in the morning, drop off, pick up around four, make them start homework at 5. I keep feeling like there’s this huge change coming but not really. At least getting up earlier allows for me to get back to my old exercise classes. 

The only real change this year is Theo starting middle school and having to try harder. I feel like he really coasted these last two years and I’m worried he’s going to struggle to keep up. He’s a smart kid and I know he can do it, but he’s not used to working hard, as evidenced by how long it’s taking him to get through this book. I do have a fear that he’s not going to do well. Bobby seems to naturally apply himself so I never had to worry about him much - another way we’re similar. I’m going to have to pay close attention to Theo this year to make sure he’s not slacking. I feel like if he starts off well in 7th grade that’s a good sign that he’s got the skills to continue to do well.