Penultimate desert visit and week of school

Since my Knott’s obligation start has been inexplicably moved to mid-June, that left me with an available Memorial Day weekend, which of course was spent in the desert, heat be damned.

We now have a nice selection of regular activities out there - we go to the drive in every Saturday, can hit up the community pool between Memorial and Labor Day, and get brunch at our favorite punk rock dive bar, The Palms, on Sunday. The rest of the time is usually spent driving back and forth to hardware stores for parts for various projects. This weekend’s project was Operation AC - the H brought out a small window unit for the upstairs, which needed a platform built. As I suspected, it takes way more power than we currently have available from our camping battery. Because the place is insulated so well, I think it’s possible to run it for a short time and trap the cold inside for some relief; but I still maintain that once it starts getting up into the 100s out there it’s really just too miserable to be worthwhile. The H wants to be able to still go there in summer, I say we just stay away. As long as our lives are the way they are currently (me playing Knott’s every Sunday, stressing about my event coming up, and kids starting school early in August), I just don’t see how it’s possible. I had a thought about how women want to work with the natural ebb and flow of things, while men prefer to force things to their will. He always wants to buy battery-powered things for out there, I prefer manual so you don’t have constant anxiety about having enough power. He wants to make the place visitable in summer; I say just wait until it cools down. I suppose there’s value to both approaches, really.

One pleasant surprise was getting a pump for the water tank which enabled us to finally fill the old galvanized cowboy tub I bought years ago - we kept it full of sun-warmed water all weekend, and we were able to just hop in and immerse ourselves all weekend, which was more wonderful than I can describe. 

So we went to the community pool on Saturday to beat the heat, saw a movie that night, then Sunday went to a charming little local carnival. I can really see the appeal of small towns - it’s just so much easier to keep track of things when you don’t have a million choices. I see how people get overwhelmed by cities. There’s just too much going on. 

The plan is to go out one last time in two weeks and strip the beds and close the place down for three months. I’m watching the temperatures, though - last year in June there was a wicked heat spell with temps above 120° for about two weeks. Right now it looks like it should only be 90s. Hopefully we can make it. It’s always bittersweet, that last visit.

The boys officially have two weeks and two days left of school. I can say that Bobby did spectacularly well at his first year in junior high. He’s got a good work ethic and does his best, which is all I had hoped. Theo, with his normal guileless nature, got through what could have been a meh year with his usual aplomb; I’m not a fan of his current teacher, honestly, but as with everything, he seemed just fine. He’s developed a sudden obsession with soccer, so I’d like to try to get him into something for the fall - although he’s starting so late, it may be challenging. But if he’s really into it, I’ll do whatever I can to support it. 

We have one more year of elementary school and then that world for us is over forever, which is an odd thought. Next weekend I’m going to a seminar to learn about colleges and how to prepare now - I’m at a complete loss as to how that all works, especially California’s complex system. As usual I’m eager to get a head start. Tonight we take Bobby to see The Damned, and tomorrow we take him to see Gang of Four. Within 5-10 years, all these 70s foundational punk bands will be gone - got to get that music education in now while we can!

Hello, my beautiful weirdos

This Saturday was Cruel World, the annual dark 80’s goth music festival in Pasadena. This year we took Bobby, who thankfully still has an interest in his parents’ music. I don’t know how long this will last before he thinks everything from our generation is lame. Or maybe he won’t? I never tired of my mother’s 1950’s bebop jazz - I still think it’s the coolest thing ever - but with that said, I have not passed that music on to my kids. Just goes to show how much is lost generationally.

This was the first of the four years I’ve been in which the weather was cold and rainy - thank god I brought a poncho on a last minute impulse, only thinking of having a dry place to sit; I ended up wearing it for the four hours it rained in earnest. Despite spending a day putting a cool, sexy goth outfit together and watching hair tutorials, because of the cold I ditched it all and just wore pants and a t shirt and a jacket. Boring. But boy did I appreciate that later when the temperature dropped and we still had to be outside for several hours! Also, I must admit it was nice to not have to wear a dorky hat and worry about re-applying sunscreen all day. 

As far as lineups go, this year was my least favorite, and I’m afraid that may continue to be the case as the festival naturally moves on from the original goth heavy hitters into more 80s pop and modern goth bands (I personally kind of enjoyed the down-ballot modern goth bands early in the day more than I expected - they still have the spirit of the original movement, whereas some of the legend bands have moved on and lost their bite, as it were). But as always there were too many bands to see, anyway, so we caught the ones we really wanted to see and had a full day: Actors, She Past Away, OMD, Madness, The Buzzcocks, Blancmange, Alison Moyet, DEVO (Bobby’s favorite), The Go Go’s (kind of a hot mess imho), and finally New Order. We were there about twelve hours and were wrecked. Theo stayed home with a sitter. 

I’ve had a lot of feelings about this festival - every year it awakes in me a certain saudade that I can’t really put my finger on; is it wanting to be young again? Is it the joy of community? Is it some youthful romanticism? It’s all things, really, and this year in particular for a few hours there was no Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA. It was great escapism at a time when we need it most, and for that, I’m thankful. Since none of my favorites were there this year (Bauhaus and the various offshoots), I didn’t have any magical moments. But it was still a profound experience, one I’m recovering from emotionally a bit today. Feeling dark and sad about the political news today - Rump gets to remove protective status from Venezuelans, the horrid soul-crushing budget bill advances, ugh ugh ugh. It’s a harsh reality to come back to, for sure. 

Theo is off on his 5th grade trip for two nights to Astro Camp, and that feels odd and sparks a certain mom anxiety in me, hoping he’ll be ok. It’ll be just me & Bobby until Wednesday which feels wrong (the H will no doubt be working every night). I’m trying to focus my energy on next weekend’s desert trip - possibly our last - as the next thing to look forward to. In between I’m just taking things one activity at a time, trying to not be overwhelmed and stay grounded. Life in a fascist dictatorship is a marathon, not a sprint. 

Happy MD

It’s been a few years since Mother’s Day was a tortured exercise for me, and for that I’m profoundly grateful. I’m not a big fan, in general - I don’t like attention and huge displays of emotion, because a) I’m an uptight New England WASP, and b) the child of a narcissist. So the idea of being fawned over is extremely embarrassing for me. Just to spend a day with the family is enough, so we did that. We went to a Bowie photo exhibit, then had a desultory lunch at this random place in Koreatown that unfortunately only had one thing on the menu without meat in it, then the H went to work (of course) and I went to the weekly protest at the airport, to protest the airline (Avelo) that has a contract to fly deportees to the Salvadoran gulag. 

Because of Mother’s Day, the crowd was about 1/4th of what it was last week. As an event organizer, I feel for the people putting these things together - you really have no control over who and how many people show up, and the experience for everyone rests heavily on who and how many people show up (I may feel this in real time when my event rolls around). The V-E day event I went to was pretty cringe and lame, but really only because such a small crowd was there (probably about 40 people), so it just felt sort of pathetic. But if it had been 500 people, it would have been great. Go figure. 

As usual, we had probably 85% of cars driving by ignore us, 10% honk in support, and 5% flip us off or yell things. One guy was bold enough to roll down his window and yell at us that the deportees (I should really say kidnapping victims) were “rapists”, and I was proud that the crowd didn’t stand for that - we all got in his face and yelled “your president is a rapist!!!” One Latino guy in the front was especially agitated. Good for him. 

I’ll be back next week. Hopefully there will be more people. I always exchange sarcastic outrage with other women over 50 (most of the crowd), and was pleased to connect in person with a nice disabled man I’ve been connected with on Bluesky. 

I hand made this sign for Andry, the gay makeup artist who has been trapped in that hell hole for two months. We don’t even know if he’s alive. The thought that he, and so many others, escaped their home country and came to us for safety, only to be hideously betrayed by our shit government, makes me absolutely sick. Whatever happened to “bring me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”? This is NOT the country I was raised to believe in. I, too, feel betrayed. So I hold this sign to remind people what happened to this young man. If this were my son, I could only hope someone would do this for him. Happy Mother’s Day.

 

Pancakes and contemplation

This morning we went up to the kids’ old school which was having their annual pancake breakfast, an event I’ve been going to off and on since Bobby was a baby. It’s a community gathering, really, of people On the Hill (or, in our case, at the base of said Hill). 

I wasn’t sure if we’d see anyone we know - I assumed Bobby’s old friends wouldn’t be there since they’re all junior high schoolers now. But I was pleasantly surprised that most of Bobby’s friends were there, and Theo saw an old friend, and they all ended up hanging out and playing basketball and handball for much of the morning. It was funny watching Bobby slowly walk back and forth across the playground with kids he’d been in kindergarten with, all in their giant pants and all taller than me. He’s at a friend’s house now. 

As I sat on a bench in the shade and watched all the hipster parents milling about with their raggedy free-range kids, smelling the familiar eucalyptus, I had a thought. I think it may have been a mistake to pull the kids out of this school.

In hindsight now, I realize Bobby most likely would have been admitted to his current school no matter what, and I’m not sure that one year of being in the highly gifted program did much for him. He says he didn’t like it much, and now he’s just in the regular gifted program that he would have been in anyway. And Theo’s definitely gotten the short end of the stick just being wait listed for the gifted program every year anyway. So…was it worth it? I’m starting to think it probably wasn’t. They could have easily stayed at this school as planned, finished out sixth grade, and gotten the same results. 

But I also see how, at the time, it seemed like a great opportunity, and I didn’t want to “hold Bobby back” just for sentimental reasons. I didn’t want to be selfish. And I was very much influenced by the one friend who’s son had moved over in 5th grade - only to have both our and their friendship pretty much vanish once the kids were in the same class again, which I did not predict (the mom got a full time job, so getting together for coffee or hikes became impossible, and the kids drifted apart). I couldn’t have left the kids at this school and not felt guilty. Then in the same year the principal was replaced with one that’s been roundly disliked, and most of the best teachers left. So it seemed like we got out “just in time”. But being back up there today…I had my doubts. 

It was heartwarming to watch the boys pointing out all the things they remembered - even certain bushes by certain houses they remembered from when they used to walk home. I told them maybe someday if they have kids they can use my address so their kids can go to this school, and grandma can pick the kids up and they can play at my house until they’re done with work. Of course, all of this assumes a lot - that we’ll even be living normal lives in 20-30 years; it’s hard to picture that, now, that in the 40s or 50s there will even be a country or a planet in which people still have kids, go to work and school, have normal lives. But I digress. Hearing them speak so nostalgically about their old school made me wonder what the harm would have been in leaving them there until they graduated, and realizing that I probably could have done that after all. It made me sad. I think of all the connections I could have fostered there, instead of going to the new school where I know nobody and don’t feel any community at all. Sigh. Well, we all make our decisions, and we have reasons why we make these decisions based on the information we have at the time, and to be fair both kids are happy and thriving either way, so no harm done. I don’t think they care either way. They wouldn’t say it’s been a mistake to move to the new school. And Theo would have only had one year left, anyway, so, as I noted at the time, there was never a scenario in which they would have stayed at that school forever, so the school would have drifted out of our lives by 2026 anyway. Oh, well. Maybe in the 2040s or 50’s that school will return to our lives after all. Nobody knows what the future holds.

Surviving

Some gigs are to be enjoyed, some are to be survived. This last weekend was to be survived. It was a Lindy exchange at Cal Poly up in San Luis Obispo, an event that went dormant for five years because of the pandemic but returned this year and brought us back on. Unfortunately, in five years all the college kids we used to work with are gone, so this new group had never done this - or any - event before, weren’t even around to attend the last one in 2019. And it showed. It was just a whole weekend of bad decisions and inconveniences. Things like not giving us information on parking so we all drove around for 45 minutes in circles on a campus until someone finally texted instructions, having an all-amateur sound crew so the battery-operated mics kept dying during songs, timing things so the audience started filtering in during our sound check and were totally confused, nowhere to go to sit during breaks, etc etc etc. Between that and my half-dead voice from the cold I caught in DC, it was a tiresome slog. After the three hour drive home, I still managed to make it to the Avelo airlines protest, though.

I had the H get Bobby some giant pants (“pantalones gigantes”, I call them) and Theo some new shoes while I was gone - I feel this need to “stock up” and brace for shortages headed our way. Today I high-tailed it to the grocery store for toilet paper, paper towels, tissues, and pet food and supplies. These, plus batteries and kids’ clothes, were on a list of things that might be difficult or expensive to get, soon. The last shipping container lands at our port in five days. Then what? The shelves were all fully stocked (I was afraid over the weekend everyone would have bought up everything) which tells me either a) no one else got the memo, or b) I’m overreacting. Oh well, at least all of these things will get used up either way. 

We’re all just watching and waiting for “it” to hit. Some say it’s going to be a doomsday of epic proportions…others say it’ll just be a minor temporary inconvenience. Nobody says everything will be fine, not even The Dump himself. So it’s kind of like anticipating my event attendance - I am 100% going to take a hit this year - it’s just a question of, how bad? I did some math today and figured out I could still be sort of ok even if I lost 200 people (this is calculating in paying less taxes due to less income). But if I do lose 200 people, I definitely have to think about retracting the camp back to its previous three day-four night schedule, and saving the $30,000 adding this extra day is going to cost. And I have to clear that with the hotel and make sure everyone knows before I start selling tickets during the weekend. Because if things still look bad in four months, they’re not going to magically turn around in a year. I can only have that extra day when 1100 people attend. If it’s 900 or, god forbid, LESS, then I’m going to have to do something I’ve never done in this event’s almost 30 years, which is cut back. I’m sure everyone will understand. It’s about survival. 

Only the strong and well-established are going to survive this. Let’s hope I’m one of those. 

Double life

So often lately I find myself involved in raucous protests in my combat boots and protest shirts, then hours later either picking up kids and making dinner or putting on my 40s garb to go sing sentimental love songs.

This is life in 2025.

My weekend in DC was no different. Flew out Saturday for a Sunday gig. Since I didn’t have any plans Sunday during the day, I slept in late and planned to just hang around the hotel room doom scrolling, but instead caught wind of the fact that Cory Booker and Hakeem Jeffries were doing a sit-in on the Capitol steps, inviting people to come join. Well, I threw myself together and hopped in a Lyft to get my butt over there. It was a smallish crowd, but everyone was just sitting on the steps and listening respectfully. It was very church-y - lots of prayers and invocations - but, you know what? I’m down. I don’t have to be a believer to join with these people in a vision of what America could, and SHOULD, be. If elderly black folks, especially women, who have seen the worst of this country, can still believe in this place, what’s my excuse??

I was probably ten feet from the speakers for a couple of hours before I had to hustle back to the hotel to get ready. I know people have all sorts of criticism of these people and “stunts” like these, but hey - they’re putting themselves on the line to show they want to fight for us. As one who has been a leader of a Big Thing for decades and faced tons of unjustified criticism and attacks, I invite anyone who’s never been in politics or in charge of anything to STFU. 

The gig itself was great - we hadn’t done this since 2019; it was yet another event that decided to only hire local since the pandemic. They only had us, and only our small band, on closing night, not our orchestra on Saturday as we had done for over a decade. But still, the energy was fantastic, the venue was gorgeous, and it was a great night. I traded fears with a fellow organizer, chatted with folks I hadn’t seen in years, and it felt great. I had one yucky interaction with a bitter bandleader who apparently has some fucking problem with us (long story - mostly involving just jealousy) in which I went up to him and made a big friendly overture and he barely acknowledged me, in a very deliberate “fuck you”. This guy has been roundly canceled, so I shouldn’t have been surprised, but it still enraged me. I just can’t believe how fucking rude he was when we used to have a very friendly, close rapport. Well apparently he’s a right winger so his being a petty, bitter old asshole completely tracks. Hopefully our paths will never cross again.

This week I’m just doing mom stuff, protesting on Thursday, then driving up to SLO for another weekend gig and catching another protest on Sunday on my way down. Theo has an ortho appointment today - they had originally said he’d have a break from braces until later; I sure hope that’s true. Bobby now will start two years of Invisalign in June, to the tune of $250 a month. In light of this news, I canceled my terzepatide prescription. I finally got to do the telehealth meeting to discuss “my case”, and the doctor told me what I already knew, that the pills really have no effect. I should have started with the shots. But I can’t afford it now, so that whole plan has just been shelved. If I’m really that motivated to lose ten pounds, I can just do it naturally. But I’m not. So there’s that. 

Spring break on The Big Island

Last night we returned from our spring break Big Island trip, mostly funded by Marriott points (free stay in Kona) and airline miles (got us one way for free). 

Going into the trip, I had only planned one thing - a late night manta ray swim, which I’ve done twice before, but is so special and rare that I really wanted the kids to experience it. One thing I forgot about Hawaii - which I always forget - is that going into it with no plans is a very bad idea. So we had a couple of lost days that just weren’t thought out very well and resulted in lots of sitting in the hotel room on devices. But then again, at those times we were all exhausted and needed the downtime, so I’m not sure if it could have or should have been any different. 

We flew in on Monday, and arrived early enough that we had a whole day to kill with no actual plans, so pretty much just wandered around and got dinner. 

Tuesday I wanted us to have a solid beach day, so we went to Hāpuna beach and boogie boarded, which was fantastic. The only drawback is there was nowhere to rent an umbrella or chairs, and with no shade anywhere, we couldn’t stay as long as I would have liked. So by about noon we were ready to go, and I had nothing planned for the rest of the day except dinner and a farmer’s market in Waimea. 

So we went to several places to try to get shave ice and they were all closed, then went to the farmer’s market which was tiny and only had a smattering of vegetables and no fruit; it was far too early to try to stay around for dinner, so we just drove home in defeat and doom scrolled until it was time for dinner. I did find us a really pleasant Oceanside place to eat so hopefully that redeemed the day.

Wednesday the H had talked me into booking a snorkeling tour at Captain Cook - I had done this before and remembered it was a great snorkeling spot, and although I was reluctant to spend another $500, I figured I should go for it, based on how poorly my lack of planning had turned out so far.

Much to my chagrin, despite having snorkeled plenty of times before, Theo suddenly developed a fear of the fish and wanted out, so he sat on the boat most of the time. And Bobby said he was cold and didn’t want to do it, either. So that was a big waste of time and money.

Once again we had nothing planned for the afternoon and were too drained from the snorkeling debacle to be motivated to go on yet another excursion, so we hung around the hotel room and doom scrolled until it was time to set off on the manta ray tour. I was terrified the boys would not want to do it, would freak out and want to get back on the boat, etc etc…if Theo couldn’t handle a few small fish 20 feet away from him, how the hell was he going to react to a 15 foot long manta ray *literally* bumping into him in the ocean in the middle of the night?? We had a talk with them both, and I guess a little guilt went a long way - they both enjoyed it and said how cool it was, thank god. 

The next day, the H had booked a surfing lesson for the boys. I was highly skeptical. I figured Bobby might be up for it, but I didn’t picture Theo, still little at just eleven, being able to hold his own on a surfboard in open water. These kids can swim, but they have almost no experience being in deep ocean water where they can’t touch the bottom. It’s way different doggy paddling around your tiny, shallow pool than swimming in the ocean. So I did not feel good about it at all, and my fears were soon realized. The young guy doing the “lesson” paid zero attention to them - he had his back to Theo almost the whole time, and never seemed to notice that Theo was off on his own, unable to keep up. Bobby finally had to go over and sit by him on his board because it was clear Theo was struggling. At one point he fell off the board and could barely get back on, and I was absolutely horrified. I really thought my worst fear - that one of my kids would drown on vacation - was about to come true, right in front of my eyes, while I watched helplessly from the shore. I couldn’t have been more relieved when somehow the instructor saw him and came over to tow him back to shore while the others continued. There were almost no surfable waves, so Bobby pretty much just sat on the board or paddled around for the entire 1 1/2 hours. Good times!! Glad I didn’t pay for that shit. 

I had rented snorkel equipment in the hopes of snorkeling at that beach, but it was overcast and windy and cold, so I returned it unused, and once again we went back to the hotel room for more doomscrolling. We did get in a nice date night that night, now possible by being able to leave kids in the hotel room unattended. 

Our final day, Friday, was packed full of adventures, thankfully. It was my fourth trip to the Big Island and yet I had never been to the fabled green sand beach, largely because it’s so remote and difficult to fit into an itinerary. But we went, and endured a bumpy, crazy ride in the back of a pickup truck, and it was fabulous, definitely my favorite thing we did. We only had 45 minutes there or I would have gotten in the water, which the boys did. I would definitely go again, except I would hike it and plan to spend the entire day, bringing a lunch and a change of clothes. 

We had wanted to hit up Punalu’u, the black sand beach with turtles we visited last time, but ran out of time and skipped it to go straight to Volcano National Park, which was closed on our last visit. It was moderately interesting, but not great - apparently a lot of the cool features were gone since the H was a kid (a visitor center with a Geiger counter constantly going off, the ability to walk down into the crater, etc). A lot had changed since the eruption that affected our 2018 trip. So we saw some cool steam vents, looked at the crater, and went in a lava tube before the sun set and it was time to go home.

We returned yesterday night, an uneventful trip home, thankfully. Planes didn’t crash, tattoo didn’t get infected, nobody burned except Bobby’s legs and arms on the first day despite my hyper vigilance with sun screen. A good time was had.

But I think it’s safe to say that, as with all things right now, the cloud of what’s happening in our country overshadowed everything with a sense of doom. Everyone said, “just unplug, don’t pay any attention to this stuff when you’re gone”, but that was totally impossible, and also, to me, morally questionable. You can’t unplug right now - none of us have that privilege. So I followed the drama of the senator visiting Garcia in El Salvador, and the 1 AM Supreme Court ruling against further deportations, and the protests yesterday that, so far, have not caused a declaration of martial law today as everyone had feared. The whole time I couldn’t help but wonder when - or if! - we’d be able to have a Hawaiian vacation like this again, even with free flights & lodging. I wondered whether I should cancel our cruise in June. I wondered, and wonder, again, just how bad the financial pain is going to be for me this year - is it going to be a total wipeout, like 2001, back when I was single and childless and my expenses were 1/10th of what they are now…? I’m terrified. A bunch of Koreans canceled during the week, with thousands in contest fees going with them. I didn’t even have enough money in my stripe account to fund the refunds and so had to set up a wire to pay them. I’ve never had to do that before. How bad is this going to get?? I feel like all of us, whether we know it or not, are looking over a cliff right now. We’re still standing on the edge of the cliff, but in a month or two we’ll be plummeting down. The real effects of all this financial ineptitude won’t be felt for a few more weeks, but when it does - look out. And again I have to ask myself…how bad will it be for me this year? How many hundreds of people will I lose? I won’t know for weeks, as now until about mid-July are always dead for signups anyway. The uncertainty and fear are killing me. It’s really, really hard to exist under these conditions.