Re-entry

One of the most bizarre facts of modern life is the fact that you can wake up in one country and that night go to bed in another, several thousands of miles away. I did this on Monday. Now it feels like I had this crazy dream that my band went to Seoul and all the dancers were amazing and everyone cried when I sang "Georgia". It's hard to believe any of that happened except that I have the pictures to prove it.

It was such a perfect experience, and perfect experiences are extremely rare in life, so I am going to bask in that. I know even if we go again next year it won't be the same. There can never be another first time, you know?

Re-entry has been smooth. Kids are fine, tackling tons of projects (I hauled three giant boxes of hardwood up to my house today - they have to sit and absorb our smells for two weeks before we can start the laundry room/half bathroom extravaganza), exterminator came today to stem the tide of giant waterbugs invading my bathroom (don't even talk to me about that), made an appointment to get a suspicious mole on my neck checked out (with all the deaths around me lately, I am not messing around with this shit). 

Bobby made me a cute picture and card for The Day That Shall Not Be Mentioned, and The Boyfriend bought me a lovely vintage clock, a book on 1920s music and a card. What a guy. We've really been in a terrific groove lately. For a long time I wondered if he would ever stop feeling like "the other" - partially because he's a man, partially because he's a native Califiornian and I am so not as much as I love it here. But we've been in sync lately. I hope this continues on through to our trip to Hawaii in two months. Ten months together in just a few days. Crazy.

Not much more news about my uncle's tragic death. I am hoping we can all converge when I'm in Boston next month and grieve properly. 

I should have danced more

I am in my hotel room in Seoul, preparing to pack up and return to the states tomorrow after a whirlwind three night gig here singing with my band for a dedicated group of lindy hoppers. To say it's been spectacular would be an understatement.

We have been so well taken care of by the organizers, who have looked after every detail, taken us out for lavish meals like this (always with lots of vegetarian options for me):

They took us sight seeing:

...and while we played were by far the most enthusiastic audience we have ever encountered - often stopping dancing just to stand and watch us with rapt attention, even crying as we ended our final set. I spent all weekend taking pictures with fans and signing autographs. It's been nuts. And wonderful. The Korean Lindy Hop scene kicks some serious ass.

As always with these events, I leave only wishing I had danced more.

Unfortunately I am returning to an utterly bizarre and heartbreaking family drama that began the morning I left. My sister called me in tears to tell me that my beloved uncle, husband of my late aunt (mother's sister), had driven out to the gravel pit behind his house and killed himself with a shotgun. I was stunned and grief stricken. I called his two sons to express my shock and condolences - one was angry and confused; the other was sad but believed the suicide note he had left which stated that at eighty years old he felt it was his "time" and he did not want to get sick and be a burden to anyone and so decided to be the "master of his fate" and just end it.

I suspected it was a side effect of the cocktail of anti-depressants he'd been on; that no person in their right mind thinks their kids are "better off without them". Most involved parties agreed.

Then tonight as my sister and cousins were leaving his empty house in rural Connecticut where they had gathered for the weekend, they happened upon a strange note referencing a YouTube video about suicide. Upon investigation, it turns out my uncle had been very deep into one of these super crazy "law of attraction" cults that encourages its members to kill themselves when they feel like it's time - using language like "Source decides when it's time". He had stacks of books on the subject and had been watching hours of videos by this group. 

What the fuck is it with our family and these crazy cults???

Now we're all reeling trying to process this new set of information. My sister is beside herself and wants to see if we can sue this group for wrongful death. I think my younger cousin who was at peace with this may be going through a major crisis at the uncovering of this new information. I still can't even wrap my brain around it.

Well, I've got about a twenty hour travel day to ponder all this. Never a dull moment.

Sunrise, sunset

I went to visit a dying friend yesterday. She is about my age and had been battling ovarian cancer for several years. We all were rooting hard for her - I gave her my spirit award at my event a couple of years ago - but a couple of weeks ago she announced she was going into hospice care. She was still sitting up and chatting a few days ago but by yesterday she was unresponsive. I went with a friend who had seen her in that state already and told me to be prepared. I was prepared. Death is an ugly thing, especially in the young. But I managed to not completely fall apart as I held her hand and told her how loved she was and how she wouldn't be forgotten. It was heartbreaking.

She was just one of these lovely, kind, gentle people. When she goes - which could be any moment now - there's going to be a huge ripple of sadness across the dance community. People much closer to her than I was were there yesterday and I felt a little awkward about imposing on their sad moment - when a popular person dies, they sort of become a commodity and everyone wants a piece of it - but I tried my darnedest to just be quiet and respectful. 

All we all want is to live a long, healthy life. That doesn't seem to be too much to ask, but sometimes it is.

There was a lot of talk about heaven and God yesterday. I so wish I could believe in those things, but I can't. I thought about how death of loved ones is pretty rare for most first world types these days - but for many people in the world today, and certainly for generations before us, death was commonplace. My great grandmother lost one of her children in infancy 100 years ago, and I bet most women at that time had that experience. How did people go on? I guess you just do, because you must. 

I take the tactic that life is short, you never know when your number's up, so take your pleasures where you can. It's not exactly Viv from Spinal Tap's philosophy of life, "have a good time all the time", but it's close. 

Hippity hop

It's hard to believe I am one week shy of my next band trip - this one being the farthest we've ever gone (Seoul). This will be the case pretty much all year except for August and December; always three weeks away from another trip. Not complaining. It sure does break up the monotony and give you something to look forward to.

I have decided to jump ahead and do my laundry room/powder room conversion. Having one more toilet in this house is increasingly becoming more urgent, and I figure I have the money now so I'd better do it now. I'm not thrilled at 2-4 weeks more of construction around here, but when that's done the two remaining untouched areas of the house will be all new and fabulous; my much outdated and useless office/junk room will be the new laundry room (with a small table to rest my printer and wireless router on) and the current filthy service porch will be a quaint powder room. A couple of days ago I went to a salvage yard and bought a 1950's blue sink and toilet. Fingers crossed I can find the parts for them. Here I am doing my usual "making everything difficult so I can have vintage things" deal. Have I mentioned my first car was a 1962 Falcon that broke down constantly? Enough said.

Today is the second of Bobby's "hippity hop" classes. So far he's learned to jump with his feet apart and his feet together. All righty then.

A sort of homecoming

I am back from the first of eight trips this year. It went well. 

I had a lot of anxiety all weekend, and was starting to beat myself up about it, until I remembered my circumstances - leaving two small children behind, but also having to learn several new songs in just a matter of days and with only one run through before performing them live in front of a very sophisticated and discerning audience - well, that would make any rational person anxious.

So, unsure of how I would sound, I took to my usual tactic of "I may not sound right but I can at least look right". So, if you will permit me, here are my looks for our three performances:

Friday night, after flying all day, performing 1-4 AM

Headlining Saturday night

...and finally Sunday night, the dress I lost weight for. 

I got to have good quality time with my bandleader, much needed, and even met with a local SMBC and blog reader (hi!).

The BF spent the weekend running the kids ragged with the babysitter and sent me videos every day which I watched obsessively. 

I came home to a bit of a chaotic mess - the BF had left the hot tub heater on, which meant that when pool mode kicked in each day, the pool heated up, to a balmy 96 degrees. The pool was also running continuously all weekend (supposed to be just a few hours a day). Both of those things are going to cost a fucking fortune when my gas and electric bills come up this month. Also my back yard shed door was swinging wide open, which is never a good thing. The house was a bit of a mess, even though the sitter is really good about washing dishes, emptying garbage, etc - I walked in at 9 pm and the kids were running around and she was cleaning up and talking a mile a minute and Bobby pushed Theo off a chair and the BF barked at him to apologize and the pool was running and ughhhh...I just wanted to get back on the plane!

Ain't no happiness nowhere.

Things were looking up until this morning when a giant waterbug crawled up my arm in the bathroom. I screamed like a lunatic and then had the fun of trying to kill & dispose of it. I have seen way too many of those fucking things in the last year and that is totally unacceptable. I spent tonight clogging every hole in the bathroom with spackle. Please tell me this will keep those bastards in the walls where they belong.

Now I try to focus back on normal life for two weeks until it's time to leave for Korea. Well, heck, since the pool's already heated up I may just jump in tomorrow. Fuck it.

Baby steps

Two more days until my trip to DC to sing at a big event all weekend. I leave Friday morning and get back late Monday night. As much as I'm looking forward to it, I am also feeling guilty and anxious. What if there's an earthquake? What if the babysitter gets in a car accident? What if the kids get sick? What if they hate me for leaving them?

Well, I signed Bobby up for some bullshit hip hop "enrichment" class at school which should totally make up for my callous abandonment, right???

I have to learn several new songs (some I've never even heard before) which I will have to perform with no rehearsal. And my bandleader hasn't even told me which ones yet. Have I mentioned I'm a little anxious?

Anyway, things have been good around the house. It's amazing how smoothly things go when nobody's sick. Knock wood. Yesterday when I went to pick up B there were whispers of a Hand, Foot and Mouth disease outbreak circulating at the school. Oh, goodie. 

Things going good with the BF. His smoking cessation stalled a bit when his vaporizer started leaking and he stopped using it, but now it's fixed and he's back on it, although he hates it. A friend with a similar lifetime smoking addiction posted on FB that he had finally quit with the help of a low dose of Wellbutrin. I had never heard of this therapy before but it sounds very promising - I love it when drugs turn out to have bizarre other uses, like the cancer drug that helped me get pregnant (Femara). Of course, to get a prescription of Wellbutrin, he has to first get health insurance, which at the moment is totally out of reach. *sigh*. Baby steps.

Food Inc

Here is a picture of my four-year-old eating vegetables. It's a Festivus miracle.

I always thought I would be the kind of mother who's kids would be great eaters - adventurous, open, copious. Yeah, no. My kids eat like five things. Mostly because I make them like five things. Mostly because when I put out the effort to create thoughtful, balanced meals of new foods, they are roundly rejected. I know this doesn't matter and you need to keep trying. But night after night of that, throwing your creations down the garbage disposal while your children go to bed hungry (and the older one is so thin he can still wear 2T pants, just as capris) is just too much. So I fall back on the hits. Egg sandwiches. Soy sausages wrapped In tortillas with cheese. Quesadillas. In other words, nothing healthy. At all. It sucks, and I don't know what to do other than to keep introducing new things and throwing them down the garbage disposal untouched.

I can see why our parents made us sit at the table until our plates were clean. I guarantee you if I tried this tactic, however, that Bobby would win. Oh, he would win.

In other news, both kiddos on the mend and back in school this week so I've been getting a lot done. I am preparing to dj a swing dance tomorrow for the first time from my computer and not CDs (God help me) and am prepping for my trip to DC weekend after this one.

I am a bit worried about all my upcoming travel. I have a weekend away just about every three weeks until my event in Sept. I'm happy to do it but am worried how the kids will handle it now that they're older. Fingers crossed it'll be ok.