Festivals

Had a crazy incongruous day, first attending a 1920s festival in full vintage garb (both of us), then running home to rip off my dress and throw on a one-shoulder stretchy top to go see Earth, Wind and Fire at the Hollywood Bowl. Here are pics of the 20s festival:

The Weight

I feel as though a great weight has been lifted, just thinking about borrowing the money to pay my credit card and thus leaving my bank account intact. Ahhh! I feel like I can breathe again.

After a couple of weeks (well, months, really, if I'm honest with myself) of not really living life, I decided to get out and do the kind of things I used to do before the event completely took over. I did my first Silverlake reservoir walk since June (I've been too exhausted/busy/nauseated/it's been too hot to deal with it this summer), then got B and I into the hot tub (set to 95 degrees) when we got home. At first he was terrified and clung to me like a little monkey (which I actually enjoy - he's usually too squirmy these days to want much snuggle time with me), but it wasn't long before he was on his own playing with my flip flops and confidently diving into my arms over open water. I am sort of hoping he'll just magically figure out how to swim without any formal (read: expensive) training. It could happen, if I get him in the water often enough and he gets a feel for it.

Then I put him down for a nap and dove into one of my favorite escapist projects - making food from scratch that you could easily buy at the store. I finally put to work the pickling supplies I bought a year ago and made five large jars of dill pickles. I used Japanese cucumbers because they were the only ones available; I haven't made pickles in over twenty years so I have no idea if I missed some important step or just missed the mark with the ingredients, etc. But it was my fantasy when I was pregnant with B to be the kind of mom that makes fresh bread and cans preserves and pickles and has a new baked treat on the table for the kids when they come home from school, and I'm determined to follow through with that. My memory tells me pickles are pretty hard to screw up. There's no "gel stage", no timing, no taking of temperatures. Most people don't even bother with a hot water bath, as I did. So I think they'll be pretty great. 

It felt good to embrace life and forget my troubles for the day. In the never ending saga of "what to do about our sleeping arrangements", I have come up with yet another potential idea for how to create a bedroom for B. I may have my handyman over for an estimate. Can't hurt to get an estimate, right? Few things would give me more pleasure than arranging and decorating a real boy's room for B to be a toddler in. I have a toddler bed and furniture set all picked out from IKEA. I can't wait to see him in his big boy bed covered by the onesie blanket his auntie made him, while I read him a story. Good times ahead. Good times.

The rent is too damn high

I haven't written all week because, frankly, I've been too depressed. And the kind of depressed that I don't even feel like talking (or blogging) about, which you know means it's BAD. Why am I depressed? Because the rent's too damn high. 

Yes, I am completely overcome by money worries, to the point of utter paralysis. I need some relief. And last night I think I came up with a temporary solution. The sad thing is it solves nothing - in fact, puts me in a worse position than I'm in now. But it'll make me FEEL better. And we all know economics is largely about feelings - consumer confidence, panics on Wall Street. So I've decided to pay this month's $13,000 credit card bill with my business line of credit that has a very low interest rate, retaining my existing money in the bank for living expenses and hospital bills, and just slowly pay down the line of credit over time, as I've done twice before. Because the rent's too damn high.

I've discovered I just don't have the guts to live debt free but with an empty bank account. It's causing me so much stress I can't even function. Today I nearly had a heart attack when I realized I had to shell out for a $9 bottle of olive oil. This is not good. 

So, I go heavily into debt. So I rack up interest. I just have to pretend it's part of my monthly bills, the way people do with their school loans (I have none), or the way I currently do with the $100,000 I owe because of my New Orleans debacle (having bought an investment property there days before Katrina struck). It's easier to forget about debt and pay it down slowly than it is to watch your bank account dwindle to nothing knowing income isn't coming for months.

So, this all was an interesting psychological experiment, and one I'll remember for the future. There are times when aggressively paying down debt doesn't make sense - not when it leaves you utterly broke. Not when the rent's too damn high. 

I still have boxes piled in my dining room from the event. I can't bring myself to go through them and file everything away, ready for the new year, because there are too many loose threads dangling still. Negotiations continue with the hotel. I still owe some money to various people. People still haven't cashed their checks, giving the illusion that I have more money than I actually do. Nothing is completed; everything is still dragging on. I feel very unsettled. 

14 weeks today. 

Mercy

Today I did something I've never had to do before. I called up the hotel where my event was held and begged them to give me a break on my bill.

I am a terrible bargainer. Haggling has always been one of my least favorite things about international travel. So it's not surprising that for years I've had this shitty deal in my contract with them where I only get 25 staff rooms at a reduced rate whereas I usually book about 100 or more (to be clear, these are rooms for my staff that I pay for). Up until now this hasn't mattered because my old contact person would just automatically discount all of my rooms as a courtesy to me. I didn't know she was even doing this until she left the hotel last year and warned me that this would stop. I knew the difference would be several thousand dollars - but remember, I expected to have made so much money that it wouldn't really matter. Well, it turns out that bump up from my average bill of about $4,000-$5,000 to this year's whopping $9,000 does make a difference. It means the difference between having to borrow $4000 to make it to February, and start my fiscal year already behind and in debt, or not.

So I threw myself on the mercy of the higher ups and called today to beg for a discount not just for this year but for all years going forward. Naturally the guy I talked to said he'd have to take it to his higher ups, so I have no idea what the result will be. It may be that this year is a wash but in the future I can get a better deal amended to my contracts. But I felt like I had to at least try. That's a huge amount of money, and even if they just give me some small token like $500 or $1000 off, every little bit helps.

I'm beginning to question the wisdom of paying down all my debt and leaving myself penniless. Sure, it makes sense on paper - no running up of interest. But the psychological impact of having literally no money, and knowing I'm going to have to jeopardize next year by going into debt just to make it, is causing me a huge amount of stress. Part of me wishes I had put myself on a long, conservative payback plan for that sewer bill and left myself with money to live on. But again, I'd have debt hanging over my head, which I hate, and hundreds, even thousands, in interest. Still, I'm starting to think being dead broke is kind of worse. Every little thing - the $12 water filter I had to buy for my water jug, the $50 I just spent on gas, the presents I had to buy for all the people I know with late August birthdays - all of it is like a knife in my heart. I just keep thinking about all the money I'm going to have to borrow just to live for two months and how hard it's going to be to pay all that back. It's kind of like weight gain - you can put on 20 pounds easily in a few weeks of binge eating, but taking it off takes months of torturous exercise and dieting. It's easy to get into but hard to get out. 

I keep getting mad at myself for getting into this position, but then I remember that had I not had that sewer line bill I'd have more than enough money to live on and pay any hospital bill that comes my way and probably even build a room for B. So yes, I probably agreed to a little too much for my event this year - but it would have been ok had I not had that home repair emergency. 

I spent much of last night ruminating about how to jerry rig a room for B on little or no budget - accordion doors from Home Depot; curtains; moving myself out to the nursery so he can have my quiet, private room. But in the end, you know what? I may not do anything at all. I may just have all three of us sleep in my bedroom for a while. I really don't want to move all my crap into the nursery/living room where I'm exposed to the whole house, and unless that area can be made soundproof (ie, real walls and a closing door), there's no reason to put B in there because he'll just be woken up by the TV or the phone or front door anyway. If it turns out the new baby cries a lot and wakes B up I can just camp us out on the couch until he doesn't anymore. B mostly just whimpered quietly until I woke up and fed him (except for a few all-night screamers, which as noted can be solved by whisking us off to the living room couch which is very sleep able). So right now I am thinking "do nothing" may be the solution to my housing needs.

In other news, horribly nauseated today. I ran out of Unisom last night so only took the B6. Coincidence? I think not.

Thru and Thru

I've had this Rolling Stones song in my head a lot the last few days. It's because HBO just ran the Sopranos episode that has it as the closing theme (Sopranos fans - you know the one!), an episode that especially focuses on sadness, as Dr. Melfi says to Tony, "I sense sorrow coming from you." It's not that I'm sad. But I've been having a lot of profound thoughts lately, ever since that whole Spectacular Now thing a few weeks ago. It's kind of like the floodgates opened in seeing that movie, and haven't really closed yet. Also pregnancy hormones always make me super weepy, and the weeks around my event always push me into high emotionality. So it's all of these things that found me sobbing in my glider last night.

On a whim I watched a documentary called "The Other F Word", about punk rockers becoming dads (the other F word being "father"). I thought, "oh, this will be fun!" And it was fun to watch. But oh my God, so much more than that! If ever there were a movie that spoke to exactly how I've been feeling about parenthood lately - oh my God! Basically it follows aging punkers from bands like Blink 182, Pennywise, the Adolescents, Fear, US Bombs, etc, and interviews them and their experiences being dads. Also dads still being rock stars on the road, and how they try to reconcile that lifestyle to family life. It was fascinating, but of course the part that touched me the most was when these men talked about their own shitty, broken childhoods, and how becoming dads themselves was their chance to do it right, to stand up and be the present, loving dads they never got to have. I freaking love these guys! Their young lives were so similar to mine - probably a very familiar 1980's story, really; little to no parental involvement, left to our own devices wandering the streets and getting into trouble in bad company. A lot of my friends, the people closest to me, lived this life. And it was wild and exciting and free - but also sad. We only lived like that because nobody cared about us, and we carry those scars to this day. 

And now we're parents and we look at our innocent children's faces and we find it incomprehensible that anyone would want to abandon that child, or not pay child support for that child, or in any way not make that child a priority at all times. What was going on in the 70s and 80s? Was there just a wave of narcissism that swept through our parents' bedrooms at night and carried away our normal, loving parents and replaced them with these selfish pods? What is the difference between us and them, and how are some of us able to overcome and do better, while others are not? 

I was just delighted by the attitudes of these hard core dads. There's nothing more charming to me than a guy with a tattoo on his forehead and screws in his neck saying, "my kids are the most important thing in my life." I love it. I FUCKING LOVE IT. And I love these guys. God bless them. Really.

I don't like to get too mushy about the transformative nature of parenthood, because to me, for women, this is well-trodden territory. But I guess there's something about hearing dads say this that kind of reminds me how true it is. And you know, seeing great dads like that doesn't make me sad for myself, or for B who doesn't have that. It just makes me happy that people like that exist in the world. And that B can one day be a great dad even though, like these guys, he never had one. Maybe there is hope for us after all.

NT Scan

Today I had the NT Scan. I started to get nervous a few hours before. It's hard not to, when it's so early and you know almost nothing about this little person - not even their gender, much less their general health. So many things can still be, can still go, wrong. But as mentioned before, I just have a really good feeling about it.

Sure enough the technician said based on measurements alone, I have a perfect, healthy baby. My blood work of course is the other part of the equation. I didn't realize there's a second blood draw in three weeks. I don't believe I did this last time - which is probably why I got this random call from the genetics dept asking if I was still a Kaiser member and why I hadn't come back in to see them (obviously nobody told me - or I misunderstood - that there was another blood draw involved). But I got to see the little fluttering heart, the brain, the stomach, the bone structure. It's pretty fascinating. The baby was "very active". It's so odd when I still feel nothing. I try to remember what it was like to feel B shifting about in there, but it's such a vague memory. 

I am definitely "feeling it", though, just in the sense that I always have this "full" feeling like I just ate a huge meal and can't button my pants, and any abrupt movements, particularly standing up quickly, causes little shoots of pain in my abdomen. It's in there. It's definitely in there.

It's hard not to fixate on the last few weeks of the pregnancy and worry about the birth...largely, these days, about just how much this birth is going to cost me. I hate that I live in a country where I even have to consider things like that, but yes, the thought of being slammed with another unexpected $7000 hospital bill terrifies me. I'm also afraid of being induced again, having an emergency c- section that I then have to recover from, or having a normal labor that ends up totally sucking anyway. Is there ever a happy ending to these stories? Are women ever pleased with their birth experience? I think it does happen, but it's rare. I keep telling myself no matter what it's going to be VERY unpleasant. It's labor. It's no walk in the park. I'd rather be a realist than just assume I'm going to have this awesome empowering experience this time after last time's three day torture fest. I'd rather be pleasantly surprised than wickedly disappointed. The one thing for sure is I will never, ever ever, for realz this time, have to do it again. And that's pretty awesome.

Here's a pic of the nubs from today's scan:

It's a Wrap

All three of us survived The Big Weekend. Wow. How to even sum it up? It went well. In fact, everyone said it was the best one ever, and I am inclined to agree. The energy was amazing, I had the most/highest level of competitors ever, and it all went off without a hitch. Apart from the first long day there where I *kind of* felt like jumping off a cliff, the rest of the time I did not - contrast that with years ago when I felt like jumping off a cliff from beginning to end and then suffered a massive depression for weeks afterwards, I think you can say I've come a long way! I also have come up with a couple of ways to lessen some of the stress early on - cut off registration a day early so I have a day to relax and pack and do last minute paperwork rather than having to do all of that at 2 AM the night before the event; and only allowing people to sign up for contests that are happening that day so I don't get a huge rush on opening day.

I'm a big believer in kaizen, the Japanese principle of continuous improvement. Every year I keep lists all weekend long of things to do better the following year - everything from moving bands to getting more dollar bills in change. I've got some good ones for next year. 

But mainly my job for next year is to cut the budget in ways people won't notice. Like not using international teachers, or cutting one of the late night bands in favor of a DJ, since the late nights always get interrupted by spontaneous dance contests anyway. As predicted, I WAY overspent this year. And despite my stellar numbers, I am positively destitute at the moment. It's a little frightening.

So, with property taxes coming up next month, I have just enough money to make it until about Christmas, and then I'm out. Which isn't horrible when you think I only have to make it until Feb 1st when registration opens again and we start fresh; but still, puts me in the hole several thousand $$$ just to stretch that one month, which is debt that will have to be paid back. And let's not even talk about hospital bills in March-!

Anyway. So I think I'm handling this news pretty well - to be honest, I'm way worse off than I anticipated. I'm trying not to be mad at myself for such bad budgeting (remember, had I not had that $12,000 sewer repair I'd be just fine right now), nor get too bummed that I'm worse off than I was in 2001 when half my attendees evaporated. This is the nature of small business - it's up, and it's down. The important thing is the event has a bright future, moving my dates to Labor Day was a huge help, and the buzz is terrific. I just need to get past this year and we'll be ok.

Now I just need my car, washing machine, plumbing, electric, and refrigerator to last one more year, to not have any surprise medical bills (still have no bill from B's emergency room visit last Feb and I am terrified), no audits, lawsuits, natural disasters, or anything else unforeseen in the next twelve months. That's asking a lot, I know. And life never goes that smoothly. But I'm just asking that just this year Murphy's Law goes easy on me.

At the moment I'm debt free. I won't stay that way, but I'm going to enjoy it while it lasts. I don't need anything, nor do I have any desire to shop for myself, since the children have filled that hole that used to make me want to compulsively shop. Baby #2 still has a heartbeat at 13 weeks, and my NT scan is tomorrow, so I will get some sense of the baby's general health. And I need pretty much nothing for the new baby. I'd love a room to be built for B, but hey - you can't get everything you want. We'll make it work.

Here are some pictures of the event. As you can see it's very costume oriented. B delighted everyone and became somewhat of a mascot. It's crazy to think he may run this thing one day.