Movement

And then there’s movement. Staff have started returning to LAUSD campuses this week for special services, and a tentative start date for hybrid school is April 9th, as I predicted. I have no idea what that will look like - for sure it will shake up our now well established at home system, and I’m not looking forward to that aspect. But it will sure make the usual March slog easier to get through knowing there’s a definite end point! Now if we can just keep up the rapidly declining numbers and the variants don’t fuck everything up, we’re in great shape. 

Last night I finally pulled the trigger and booked our ten day summer trip I am calling the Great Southwest Road Trip. We begin with a night at a tiny house near Vegas as a good in-between point: 

Next we move on to a Conestoga wagon for two nights to check out Bryce Canyon:

Then, three nights at an earth hogan in Navajoland for Lake Powell and (hopefully) Antelope Canyon - I pretty much built the entire trip around this place: 

A stay in shepherd’s wagons near Zion National Park:

And a final stay in a cave house on our way back on the edge of Arizona:

I’ve booked these spots based on their uniqueness, not so much proximity or cost, so this trip is not going to be cheap and there’s a lot of driving that wouldn’t be necessary if I were just camping in tents or staying at hotels. But it’s all about the accommodations, so that’s what I prioritized. The BF’s car may not be able to handle this level of trip, so I may have to also rent a car (mine is too small). But I feel a certain urgency to make this trip now as it’s probably the last summer ever I won’t be working on an event and the BF *might* not have a ton of work still. I doubt we’ll have this kind of flexibility again. Now’s the time to get away as much as we can. I have us out of town practically every weekend this summer. 

Polarized

I don’t think I’ve ever seen coronavirus news quite so polarized as it is right now. Half my suggested news articles say we’ll have this whole thing in the bag by April, while half say with the X factor of the new mutations present, this thing could drag on for another full year. My opinion is the truth is, as always, probably somewhere in between. I doubt we’ll reach herd immunity in just a few weeks...but as of this moment the mutations don’t appear to be a massive threat. A threat, but not enough to make us start over. Mostly on my mind is of course schools - and the good news is teachers and staff are cleared to start getting vaccinated by March 1, with 10% set aside just for them. This is exactly correct. LAUSD is determined to open by mid-April, at least K-6, and it sounds doable to me. There are 25,000 elementary school teachers who could be vaccinated in two days. It can happen.

My online mom groups are on fire. Many parents angry at everyone for what’s happening (when really the thing that caused all of this is a virus, not a person, although people didn’t help), protesting the system, upset their special needs children have been left behind, upset their kids are upset, worried about their current and future academic performance. I’m just over here like “lol”. That’s a joke. But seriously - a lot of unpleasantness going on which is to be expected. I hear and understand everyone’s point of view. 

I had lunch with a friend with three kids on Saturday who told me her second grade son is struggling. Or not so much struggling but slacking. He’s in hybrid school and has not been doing his independent work. 100% if Bobby had been left to his own devices last year the same thing would be happening. I think it’s unrealistic to expect seven-year-olds to project manage like that - while avoiding the temptation to screw around on the computer since nobody’s checking in. Personally I’m glad these kids are home where I can check everything before submitting. Bobby mostly can handle this stuff alone now at nearly nine...but a year ago? Not so much. 

I stumbled across a cool outdoor art installation / scavenger hunt thing going on around Joshua Tree starting on Theo’s birthday weekend in three weeks - and wasted no time finding us a 1950s silver trailer to rent for the weekend. Hooray, we get to the desert once more before it’s too hot! I knew we could make it happen. I’m also about to pull the trigger on our epic Zion / Bryce / Antelope Canyon road trip this summer. I’ll start booking it this week. 

Here are the boys on our weekly jaunt to In-n-Out Friday after the boys are done with school. On this particular Friday I totally forgot Bobby had to log back in for small group stuff with his teacher for a few minutes in the afternoon. Whoops. 

Yosemite, 28 years later

When I first moved to LA in 1993, one of the first things I did was tag along with a group of established friends from my then church on a backpacking trip to Yosemite. It was great, and something I’d like to replicate at some point (I’m feeling like I’m up for more adventure than car camping, but need to find people to do it with me other than children or a partner who absolutely must have a toilet). Anyway, I had not returned since, until this weekend. 

We stayed at this awesome converted train caboose which did not disappoint. 

It was not exactly close - it was an hour and a half drive to the park, with over an hour wait each day to get in (tickets were limited due to covid - thankfully I found out about the ticket sale just hours before it happened last week and refreshed a thousand times, full of anxiety, until I got one for us). The first day it snowed, and we attached our as it turned out ill-fitting snow chains, but still spun out doing a complete 180 on the road, which was horrifying. Still, we survived the treacherous descent into the park in the snow and had a decent day. We even lucked into seeing the rare “firefall” phenomenon which only happens a few days a year (it’s when the setting sun hits a waterfall just right to make it look like it’s on fire).

We returned the next day for a very long hike to Mirror Lake and a visit to the Ahwahnee hotel, which is definitely a “return without kids” plan. 

Overall thoughts? I’m glad we went, but I wouldn’t return in winter. It was just too damned cold, and almost everything was closed due to winter and covid. Of course we were woefully unprepared; none of us had snow boots (I thought we could get away with rain boots and heavy socks - nope) and the kids’ jeans were almost instantly soaked and freezing. So, big fail there. Had we had proper clothes we could have had a lot of fun playing in the snow. Instead we just got cold and wet. The kids, however, were total troopers and never complained, even when we dragged them on long, cold hikes as the sun set and night came on, just to see a river or a mountain. We walked a lot, saw beautiful things, and I felt my soul replenished. 

We were very cozy and comfortable in our little house, and the BF’s incredibly beat up car survived, even as it passed 200,000 miles on our second trip back from the park. We all applauded its heroism. 

So, now we’re home, and hooray for California, our Covid numbers have finally hit the threshold to reopen schools. This fact alone means nothing; unions and LA Unified are still obstinate about all staff being vaccinated first, even as our vaccine sites are being shut down for a week due to lack of vaccine supply. I’m starting to scratch my head a bit about the possibility that opening a school like ours - with tons of outdoor space and the proper precautions - might not be so impossible after all. Anyway, I’m sure it’ll be a big week for school news. I think if our numbers continue to plummet we may at least have a tentative reopening date soon. I’m thinking post-spring break still. Which means only six more weeks of this relentless grind. Could it be? We’ll see.

In other news, as is always the case, I spent our return drive from this trip planning our next trip, in this case, skipping ahead to summer. I’m increasingly thinking Hawaii is just too much of a pain until we’re all vaccinated - so I may not attempt a visit this summer. What I may do instead is follow up on the Bryce/Zion/Page AZ trip I’ve had bookmarked for ages. In investigating what to do near Page (which is the general area of this Navajo-run glamp site I’ve been dying to visit) I discovered Lake Powell, on which you can rent houseboats, which is something my camping pod friend and I had talked about. Within thirty seconds she said she and her family were into it. So I think that’s going to be my birthday week plan - some combination of sheepherder’s wagons near Zion, maybe a Conestoga wagon near Bryce, an earth hogan in Page and then a houseboat. I just have to secure all these rentals now before they get booked up. I have a feeling the summer is going to be nuts with everyone all coming out of hiding at once. 

Week 5,897

Our numbers continue to plummet, but we’re still in the same situation we were last week - not enough vaccines, no idea when school will open. Sigh. The minutes fly like hours.

I was however able to see a couple of friends I hadn’t seen in months over the weekend thanks to the return of outdoor dining and newly acquired N95 masks. I drove up to Ventura on Saturday to see a florist friend who’s shop had to refuse all future Valentine’s orders because they are so inundated with funerals (how fucking depressing is that), and Sunday got my hair done and then had outdoor lunch with a book club friend. We all want to stomp our feet with frustration and shout “no! I don’t want this!!!” to the void, but nobody will hear it or care, especially when everyone is doing the same. Tensions are high about school, but I have to say, I’m with the teachers on this one (acknowledging fully that I have the privilege of not having children or a career who have/that has been harmed by schools being closed). I don’t really care if agencies that have been wrong many times say schools can open without teachers being vaccinated and it should be fine...how do we know that, especially with new variants? There’s no guarantee. I say we wait. Forcing adults into a potentially harmful situation sounds bad to me (although again I recognize people are forced into harm every day working with the public). 

Today I set up my ring light to take the boys’ school photos for their yearbook. They didn’t come out great - I could not get these kids to smile naturally no matter what I did - but they’re not terrible, and certainly show just how big these kids have gotten this year. They’re growing like weeds. 

Six more weeks of winter

The groundhog has spoken - six more weeks of winter. Somewhat meaningless to us here in Southern California (despite my winging, it’s actually a very pleasant 70 degrees and sunny at the moment), but still makes for a good metaphor; whatever this second winter of covid is, it’s not changing in the next six weeks. 

In lieu of my usual open for registration day which would have been yesterday, I instead posted on FB to just check in and say we don’t know that there will be an event this year, but to stay tuned. I was surprised by the response. Over 300 people reacted to it, and of those who commented, some offered to send money. I realized I really didn’t need to worry about losing my entire audience if I shut down a second year, that people are just as invested in this thing as I am, and are as eager to get back to normal as I am. For a brief moment I felt like a person who runs events, again, and later in the day found myself feeling quite emotional about it. I realized I don’t want to put on a hastily slapped together event where everyone still has to wear masks and social distance, but I do want to put on a normal event with a normal lead time. The thought of starting to plan next year’s event this fall, open for registration, and open hotel reservations, actually makes me really happy. So perhaps I haven’t completely lost my desire to do anything after all. 

I had quite a fright Sunday night when I just happened upon an article about this “firefall” phenomenon at Yosemite that will be happening when we’re there in two weeks - and apparently you need reservations for the park right now, and apparently they were to go on sale at 8 the next morning and were anticipated to sell out almost immediately. WHAT. The thought of heading up there and casually cruising to the park gate only to be turned away because we didn’t have a reservation...I shudder to think about it. Long story short, after a lot of anxiety and constant refreshing, I was able to score a weekend pass. I will never again just assume National parks are open or operating normally, not right now. We’ve been very lucky thus far that, with the exception of Hawaii, none of our trips have been sabotaged due to the virus. 

Today we’ve been asked to take pictures of our kids and send them in to be included in a yearbook. I’m glad they are still making one; we can’t pretend this year didn’t exist as much as we may want to. Still no word on schools, but the head of LAUSD is insisting on staff being vaccinated first and I agree. 

Nobody knows anything

There’s talk - theoretical, of course - of schools opening in just weeks. However, I don’t see it happening for LAUSD. We need our teachers and staff immunized. It would be stupid to risk it now when we’re so close to that happening. And as much as I long for the return to school, I have to remember what all that actually entails - getting up an hour earlier, hustling kids into jackets and socks and shoes and backpacks and booster seats, making sure they have all their supplies (which will now include masks and other things) - plus no longer having the comfort of knowing my kids are safe at home. I definitely have mixed feelings about return to school. Also, it’s not like we’ll be back to full days - it’s possible only Theo will be allowed back, for one, and even that will only be a few hours a couple of days a week. Which all seems a bit pointless for the amount of trouble and risk. Still, I understand it can’t be any other way. What can you do? 

It’s been a long, boring week. I remember last year there was this social media trend of everyone complaining about how long January was; it makes me laugh sadly when I think about how good we had it and we didn’t even know it. Right around now we were watching the coronavirus in China with concern but not really thinking it would affect us - it’ll just be like SARS, right? It’ll affect those other, far away places. Not us. Never us. I’ll have my event, everything will be fine. Here I am a year later after 10 months of home schooling, one canceled event under my belt and a second one on the way, stuck at home with a frozen shoulder, not having seen a movie or a concert or gone dancing or eaten inside a restaurant for all that time, with no timeline of when any of those things can return. Other than Joe Biden being elected and kicking ass during his first week in office, it’s all been a nightmare. The only thing worse would be us getting sick, which is still a constant threat until we get access to the vaccine, which for me could still be as long as six months (luckily the BF is over 50 so he can probably get it in about a month). 

So, my oldest friend from NY is moving here on Sunday, which could be a huge game changer for me. I’m sad that his first impression of LA has to be during this fucking pandemic when it’s impossible to do anything except hike, and also when we’re in the middle of our worst cold snap of the year, wherein it’s 50s during the day and low 40s at night, as opposed to a couple of weeks ago when it was in the 80s. Sigh. We’re going to get together Sunday night when he arrives, but I don’t really know what we can do at night in LA other than walk around freezing and maybe try to grab some food while walking and try not to infect each other in the few minutes we’re eating with our masks off. Fun!!

I’ve been on a tear - one I recognize as obsessive-compulsive at this point - arranging camping and glamping trips for us, to fill the void that is my life. I booked a Kern River camping trip for July 4 weekend, and booked the Cambria cabin for Mother’s Day. Now I’m looking at the first six months of this year with a critical eye - six weeks with no travel is too much, it needs to be every three-four weeks! I’m desperate to get back to the desert again before the window closes and it’s too hot - in particular Mojave, which has three more sites I’d like to see - but other than that, as the BF pointed out...we’ve kind of seen everything already. It is true that as far as close by, quick weekend trips, which we’re mostly limited to, we’re kind of running out of options. Now I’m sort of kicking myself that I didn’t book Zion for spring break...but I know why I didn’t; because it’s still too cold there that last week of March. Well, maybe if Hawaii still isn’t possible this summer, we can go then. I’ve been fantasizing about getting a Subaru Outback and a rooftop tent and taking off to Death Valley by myself whenever I feel like it...while also acknowledging that I wouldn’t feel safe in a remote place like that alone, and it would be fucked up of me to not include my family in my plans. I only have ten-twelve years left with these kids - nine have already flown by. The time for solo stuff will come; but not yet. 

Everybody wants the ‘xine

So, Joe Biden is president. Every day has brought a sigh of relief as far as his reversals of *he who shall not be mentioned’s* craven policies and coronavirus relief get signed off on...ahhhh. Help us on the way. But when?

Los Angeles is reeling as the world epicenter of the virus, and my neighborhood, with its working class, multi-generational household, and service-job population, is one of the worst. We even have placards warning people who come here to be extra cautious. Can you see why I don’t want to leave the house? Vaccine rollout has been slow and frustrating, but I expect that logjam to break soon, within weeks. Still, frustratingly, several people I know have cheated their way into getting vaccines when they don’t qualify yet. Which I find abhorrent. They tell me I should, too. I judgingly tell them I’ll wait my turn, thank you very much. Other than a boyfriend who goes to work and stores and then comes home, my risk is exactly zero. Or let’s say 1.0 for our once a week In N Out lunch drive thru trip, and my touching of mail and Amazon packages. 

So right now health care workers and some seniors are starting to get shots. A friend posted that teachers will start on the 30th, which is of special interest to me since that directly affects when kids will be allowed back at school. Still, our mayor said at this current rate it would take nine years to vaccinate everyone in LA. Ugh! 

The thought of waiting six more months to get a vaccine, which is what some people are estimating, is unbearable to me. Still, there’s a little part of me that wants things to be definitively slow - slow enough to drastically reduce the virus by summer but not enough to allow for crowded indoor gatherings - so that I can get out of my hotel contract and not have to run an event this year. I think I can safely say that there is no way in hell in seven months we can have crowded indoor events, not without so many restrictions (constant mask wearing, drastically reduced attendance, no partner switching, constant hand sanitizing, etc etc) that the event would be physically impossible. The idea of having to throw the whole event together in just a few weeks or months is absolutely terrifying to me - and honestly, I think would end up being a bit of a disaster. I want our return to be triumphant and joyful, not half-assed and sad with everyone still afraid of getting sick. I can guarantee no money would be made. What’s the point? Tomorrow a dancer friend who is a doctor is doing a zoom meeting for all of us organizers looking for answers - I think I can predict that he’ll say what I’m thinking; that yes, there is a chance events will be allowed in some form by end of summer or fall, but only with certain restrictions in place. Which means the hotel and I need to have some hard conversations. Technically I owe them $200,000 if I cancel. Again. Sigh.

Right now I’m putting all my hopes on this new performance venue grant the SBA is soon going to be offering, which would solve all of my financial woes. There is no timeline for when it will be available and no guarantee I’ll get it. I keep an eye on it every day. It’s my only hope, at the moment. 

We survived the second week back at school, and the boys are past their post-Christmas break wiggles. I ran into a parent of one of Theo’s classmates on my walk who said they’re looking at private schools for their daughter because they feel the education quality has suffered a lot. I disagree - I mean, they’re only in 1st grade, how much can it suffer? They’re writing and reading and doing math and science and art...if anything I’ve learned how much their full day of school is padded with things like lunch breaks and recess and other non-academic stuff. Not that there’s anything wrong with that; just saying now that I see them learning in real time each day I see how little of their day is spent on actual schoolwork. Theo is done with the teaching portion of his day in two hours and then has maybe an hour of work after that; Bobby is done by around 1 after a 40 minute lunch break (which means he really spends maybe three hours at actual “school”) and then has about an hour of independent work. It’s not a lot, but again with all the breaks and lunches and things it stretches into a full day - sometimes we’re not done with everything until 4. 

With teachers maybe starting to get vaccinated in a week or two, I’m still holding out for a return to school by post-spring break (first week of April). Could it be I only have two more months of home schooling?? Could I for once in my life have a couple of hours of quiet in my own house? Is it possible the kids will return to school before fall?? Nobody knows. 

In the meantime I am plotting a Mother’s Day weekend trip to possibly Cambria to a little cabin I almost booked for my birthday week. I am still holding out hope for a birthday Hawaii trip, assuming the BF and I have our vaccines by July (I think that’s a safe assumption). I don’t know what the plan would be for the kids - they won’t have access to vaccines by then, but will need tests, and many places won’t issue tests to anyone under 12. We’d have to figure it out. But I am borderline obsessed with Hawaii at the moment; I think about it all the time. I’ve convinced myself a destination wedding on Hawaii is the way to go - it would be a great way to cull the guest list down to the people we really care about (although that could backfire if none of them can afford to get to Hawaii) and thereby save money, while also having a gorgeous place to be (and maybe hop over to Fiji or some such place for a short honeymoon while someone watches the kids). Anyway. Have I mentioned how much aspirational living is my main indulgence right now, since current actual living is so bleak and crushingly boring? Yeah. 

Here is a picture of Bernie at the kids’ school gate waiting for school to reopen. Bernie is all of us.