Final week of school

Two more days of school and then I (we) get to sleep in for three weeks (mostly). I’m inordinately excited about this. I know Bobby, my fellow night owl, feels the same.

We’re lagging on Christmas presents this year. Bobby has made an expansive list, which is very helpful, but Theo has no idea what he wants, and we have no idea, either. We did trade their untouched Nintendo switch for a second used VR headset, but we need to supplement with other small things and we’re at a loss. Bobby asked for sunglasses and a drink cooler and I figured both boys could use those things so I ordered them for both, and I also got some books and impulse bought a Lego chess set. But time is running out - we leave for Florida a week from Sunday so our Christmas will have to be Saturday, and all of these things have to be bought, shipped, and wrapped. I also haven’t even begun the candy making I normally do at this time - mostly because there’s no rush, I don’t need to give any out until next week, and next week is pretty empty while this week is pretty full. It’ll all fall into place I’m sure, but right now it’s still up in the air.

This week I’m just allowing myself to enjoy my last moments of solitude before the three week onslaught of family time, which for much of it involves cooking breakfast, lunch and dinner for at least three people every day, which I despise doing. My whole life becomes food prep and kitchen cleaning and it sucks up pretty much all of my time. Not to mention having to monitor kids actually changing their underwear and brushing their teeth and the constant, pulsating guilt of knowing the kids are on screens too much and I really should be arranging fun and enriching activities for us but I just don’t have it in me to be fun coordinator anymore after twelve years of parenting. Don’t get me wrong - I’m actually looking forward to the school break. But I am experiencing a certain amount of existential dread regarding what I’m actually going to do with these kids all day every day.

I had a big nothing of a corporate gig last night that paid ridiculously well, then tonight is the real marathon in that we have to drive to San Diego and back. I probably won’t be home before 3 AM, which is scary. I promised myself last time we did this gig that we should stay at a hotel rather than try to drive home - but here we are. The H will take the kids to school in the morning. And I’ll probably need all day to recover. The good news is, it’s (almost) the last of the gauntlet of Christmas gigs (one more easy and fun one next Friday). 

Looming ever above my head is my grant review which I have not tackled other than reaching out to my accountant for help. He wrote up a chart of accounts for me - that’s one thing done - but someone else in his office has to do a year’s worth of bank reconciliation, and I haven’t heard from that person. I also have a ton of work to do myself, but I’ve been forcing myself to wait until next week so I don’t rush it and can take the time to focus. I’m so terrified of this whole process - I know they’re going to demand some money back, but how much is the question, and when, and will this ruin my life or not. It’s so scary I just have to put it out of my mind every time I think about it. There’s no way out but through, so next week I just have to be a big brave girl and sit down and tackle it piece by piece until it’s done. I desperately want to get this handled before I leave, but the accounting stuff unfortunately I don’t have a lot of control over.

Period showed up three weeks late all nonchalant like the brunch guest as the check arrives, with a Starbucks in one hand and phone in the other, not understanding why everyone’s annoyed. I wouldn’t mind if it was consistently late - fewer periods is of course better - but I’ve entered the age of inconsistency; for all I know I’ll get another one in two weeks, then another a month after that, and another six weeks after that. Sigh. 

Decorated

We did the Christmas decorating this weekend, and I don’t know if it’s age finally catching up with both of us, post-two time covid infection exhaustion or menopause for me, but it knocked both of us out and I hate to admit it but I didn’t enjoy it at all. I just wanted to be done, but between the tree buying and decorating, light hanging and living room decorating, it pretty much took the entire day, and halfway through I was officially done. I did, however, enjoy that the kids seemed to get a kick out of looking at our old familiar ornaments and hanging them, and that was delightful. I do have some Christmas-loving kids, and I’m here for it. The H badly injured his knee putting lights on the house and has been stressed out and limping around all week, worrying about work and not letting it heal. 

I had an odd weekend of emotional upsets that I’m still not recovered from. Sunday I had a very stressful gig in which we played for a fellow dancer’s memorial service, and there were several people there that I can’t stand who normally I can avoid, but, you know, funerals, where everyone comes out whether you want to see them or not. I just hid backstage when I wasn’t singing, so I couldn’t socialize or really be present, and I felt guilty about that, but I also knew the people I didn’t want to deal with would 100% approach me if I made myself available (one finally just barged backstage “to say hello”). So it was basically four hours of torture. Then - and this sounds petty, but hear me out - the goth festival I’ve been waiting to hear an announcement for suddenly put up next year’s lineup, and…apparently it’s now a lame 80s Top 40 festival, because that’s where the money is. I was, and am, absolutely gutted. I feel like I was enjoying a seance in a cemetery and then some cheerleaders showed up. I posted my dismay on the festival’s group (I wasn’t alone in this), got relentlessly attacked and laughed at until I had to block some guy and leave, and then spent the rest of the night trying to calm the adrenaline surging through my body. Once again, the jocks and cheerleaders ruin everything. 

I also am starting to feel like, as much as I’m enjoying the work and feel like I’m doing something important, doing this podcast is kind of fucking with my mental health. It’s digging up a lot of ugly memories and making me feel like a broken person, which I’m not. I think I’m going to just do a couple more interviews this month - one today, one in a couple of weeks - and give myself a break for the holidays. I need to get some distance from it. Then regroup in January and start up again until I’ve made my way through all the people that wanted to talk to me, which could only be a few more at this point. But since I can schedule episodes for whenever, I definitely have enough to fill up December. Then I may find I’m done with the whole project. We’ll see. 

My period is now nearly three weeks late. I’ve been through this before during this year, but I don’t think I’ve ever gone quite this long. I feel the same sense of uncertainty that I had as a young girl, waiting for it to appear - when will I get it? What if I never get it? What if it stains my clothes and everyone laughs at me (I saw Carrie too many times)? Now I have similar but opppsite questions - when will I get it? What if I never get it again? What if it stains my clothes and everyone laughs at me? I always secretly hope my period will just stop appearing and I won’t have any other symptoms - a friend had this experience - but considering how much my mother suffered and how my sister dealt with hot flashes for years, this scenario is fairly unlikely. So for now I just play the waiting game. My prediction is I will get it sometime in the next couple of weeks, and I’ll continue to have irregular periods for a few more months or a year still. We shall see. Other than rapidly gaining weight and a fair amount of bloating and cramping, I feel fine. Exhausted all the time, but fine. Welcome to life in your 50s. 

Back in the Groove

Two more weeks until winter break! I feel like the time is dragging and flying all at once. We were too exhausted to decorate for Christmas last weekend as I’d planned, so we agreed to wait until tomorrow. It does not feel Christmas-y yet because of this. 

The kids’ new school does not do any kind of holiday program, which is bizarre. I’m so used to kids practicing Christmas carols and having to get together white shirts and red sweaters and things. I have to admit I’m kind of bummed. The only thing I can guess is after covid shutdowns the teachers rebelled and said they’re not doing it anymore. I can’t blame them. I’m sure coordinating all that is a huge pain in the ass. 

Since I *think* the H has finally grasped the concept of not buying the kids mountains of toys they’ll never use, I think we’re on board to have a small Christmas list this year. He wisely traded the kids’ unused Switch for a second used VR, since that’s pretty much the only thing they use now and not fighting over the one we have would be great. I think we’ll just get a few small things and then that’s it. I think this is a good plan. I impulse bought a Lego chess set which I’m kind of regretting now. 

My life has become completely consumed by my podcast work, and I’m not mad at it, except that it’s made me largely forget about any event organizing I should be doing (hiring teachers and musicians, updating the website, advertising - every week these things are in my calendar and every week I push them forward to the next week), and I’ve also pretty much stopped exercising entirely, and it shows. I made a promise to myself to get back to walking at least three times a week starting Monday. The weather is cool, I can always go after picking up kids from school, I have no excuse. BUT I just feel like I’m in this flurry of activity to get as much content going as possible; I’ve announced the podcast’s existence in the two relevant FB groups, so now the pressure is on to consistently produce shows. And I think I can continue to do this through December. However…last night I went back through the threads in which people had expressed interest in being on the show, and realized I’m through about half of them. There is, in fact, a finite number of people who would want to do this; it’s a tiny religion, most people who left don’t feel a need to talk about it because they didn’t have a bad experience, many people aren’t interested in being on podcasts, and those who are just may not be able to find the time. So I have a lot of factors against me. I knew most likely this podcast could only be a “limited series” of twenty or so episodes, but I kind of hoped I could continue for a bit longer. If I run out of people to talk to I can certainly re-edit the current long episodes into more digestible “highlight” versions of a half hour or less; that’ll keep me busy. And I’d still like to explore putting shorts on TikTok in an attempt to get more visibility (my listeners/viewership is still very low). But as of right now, recording, editing, and uploading these long videos takes entire days of my time, often 8-10 hours, which is a lot, and causes me to neglect other things. Still, I think it’s important enough that I feel compelled to push forward. 

Our band didn’t get hired for Knott’s this year, but we still have four other gigs in the next two weeks, most of which involve long, late night drives (Santa Barbara, San Diego, Irvine). We are on for Germany in February which means I’m going to miss Bobby’s send off to Catalina for his 6th grade trip, which sucks. But I think 2024 is the return of international travel for us, and I’m thrilled.

The big move

This week we made the big move to the cabin (just stuff, not ourselves, of course). It was a moment I’ve been dreaming of since I first put in an offer on the property in March of 2021. There were many times I thought we’d never get here, between getting ripped off by the first contractor to not being able to find another one for months or years. But this week I was finally able to get a U-Haul and move all the crap I’d been collecting out of the attic, plus unused furniture from the shed, and fill in the gaps at ikea (mattresses, bedding). It was a delicate balance of timing everything just right - picking up the U-Haul, getting movers to help get stuff down our stairs, picking up items at ikea (picking out the bedding took hours and was so ridiculously complicated I thought we were all going to lose our minds), then the H took the U-Haul to Orange County to pick up some water tanks a client had gifted him, while I drove the kids FOUR miserable hours in holiday traffic out to our place. When the H arrived he accidentally backed the U-Haul into soft sand and got stuck, which prompted a crazed attempt at digging/trenching out in the middle of the night and well into the next day, only to give up and hire a tow which cost $350. Then we had a four hour round trip to drop the U-Haul (ah, remote places). Then we had several pieces of furniture to build in two days before it was time to leave. To say it was exhausting was an understatement. I feel like I’ve never been so physically drained in my entire life. Thankfully the H thrives on hard physical labor - and I often thought how I never in a million years would have attempted this as a single woman. I would do other things in the desert - camp, or stay at airbnbs - but not try to have our own place. It’s just too hard. 

The drag was the boys had nothing to do the whole time. They could only be enlisted to help a certain amount; there’s a point at which they get bored or make the task take longer than it should. So even though we brought bags of board games, other than one game of monopoly, they refused to play any of them, instead begging to play on my phone (something I’ve never allowed - until now), tearing the place apart using the new beds as trampolines, throwing stuffed animals at each other, or whining about how bored they are. That part was a misery for me. Since the H was mostly engaged in building things by himself, I was mostly bored along with the kids or cleaning while dealing with the sensory overload of kids whining or screaming and throwing things and making loud explosive noises, all in 200 square feet. 

Why did the kids not play outside or wander and explore, you ask? Because it’s “boring”. I’ve realized kids today, since they have the option of video games somewhere in their life, will never be satisfied with just wandering and exploring like we were, because we had no choice. And I’m sure we did a fair amount of whining, too. I hate that so far nearly all of our trips have been a huge drag for the kids - we’ve always been working on projects out there, mostly ones the kids can’t help with, so they associate the cabin with being bored and being away from their video games. I hate that video games have ruined kids this way, but I suppose TV did the same in the 50s; I imagine parents raised in the 20s and 30s had the same complaint about their baby boomer children - why can’t they just entertain themselves by playing kick the can or whittling a stick like we did? Because there’s something far more interesting out there, and if you withhold it you make your kids out of step with all their peers, and time marches on whether you want it to or not. And so it goes. 

So we had an exhausting, while productive, week, which we all agreed was a success despite the difficulties. Then we had the special Thanksgiving treat I had planned that I was so proud of - dinner at the top of the Palm Springs aerial tramway - the H had wanted to take that tram for ages, and I thought this combo of the tram plus dinner would be magical. Omg did it suck. First, as we were driving to it as the sun was setting, the H bitched endlessly about how pointless it was going to be to ride up in the dark, to the point where I was on the verge of snapping at him - but it turned out he was right; it was pretty pointless to ride up in the dark, after an extremely long wait sitting on the floor in a cramped waiting room. Then we waited on line for what felt like hours in a cramped cafeteria to get our food, then had a horrible panicked fight for tables since there was only seating for about 10% of the people. It was a nightmare. And not surprisingly the food was mediocre at best. Then another loooong wait for the tram back - waaay too much standing for me, I haven’t even recovered from that music festival last weekend - and a blurry drive home after which we all collapsed into our beds. At least we had a good laugh over how awful it was; better in concept. At one point Bobby asked why we can’t have just “normal” Thanksgivings - I told him because what he considers “normal Thanksgiving” involves all the women working their asses off while the men sit around and enjoy themselves, and I’m not doing that anymore. The truth, of course, is a lot more complicated - the fact is I actually enjoy hosting meals for people (as long as someone else does the meat part) and the complicated game of planning and timing all the dishes just right, but sadly I can’t stand the H’s sister and if I host I’d have to invite her, and I just don’t ever want to have to do that again. So, that’s why the years of traveling Thanksgivings. Last year I tried to do a big meal for Christmas, and honestly, that sucked too - nothing I made was really any good, and I can’t stand that heavy American food anyway. But I have to admit, as far as Thanksgivings go, this was by far the worst - productive and important, but a complete bust as far as the actual holiday. Still, at least we had a good laugh about how bad it was. We manage to maintain our sense of humor in these situations. 

Here’s some shots of our place with the furniture in it - our crap is still all over the place so it looks crowded and messy, but eventually we’ll have curtains and things on the walls and it’ll look nice (I hope).

Last weekend in an unfurnished cabin

Last weekend was the last time we spent in an unfurnished cabin - at last, the moment I’ve waited for for 2 1/2 years, moving furniture into the cabin, is upon us. Next Monday we pick up the U-Haul, meet some movers at our house, move a few items from our shed, head to ikea to pick up a bed and a couch and mattresses and bedding, head to Lake Forest where a friend of the H has donated us a couple of water tanks, and then finally drive out to the cabin. We’ll spend the next three days assembling things and returning the U-Haul, get Thanksgiving dinner at a restaurant at the top of the gondolas in Palm Springs, head home, and then I have a gig Friday night and we’ll do Christmas lights and tree shopping over the weekend and then that’s that. We’ll have a real little home out there, ready to host us whenever we want. 

We used the little propane heater last weekend at night when it dropped below 50°, and I have to say the difference of having insulation now is palpable; even on the lowest setting it heated the whole upstairs in minutes and we had to open all the windows. I don’t think staying warm out there in winter is going to be an issue. 

The move is going to be difficult and tiring and I’m definitely dreading it. A lot has to happen in a short amount of time, and there are a lot of unknowns - extracting the furniture from the back of the shed is going to be tough, especially taking apart a large Hoosier which I’m not sure will be possible; the items we want to get at ikea are low in stock and I don’t really know what to do if they sell out before we get there (they can only hold them 24 hours apparently); I don’t know how big these tanks are and they’re way out of our way; and I don’t know how frustrating it’s going to be to try to assemble multiple complicated pieces of furniture with two kids whining about how bored they are the whole time. I’m worried the H and I are going to snap at each other like we did on our anniversary. I just don’t want this to be a bad experience - this should be a happy time, after all. I’ve wanted this moment for so long and we’ve been through so much to get here. But boy is it going to be tiring. I just hope it goes smoothly. And also that projected massive winter storms don’t flood the place and ruin everything. We still don’t have a working shower or semblance of a sink - I’ve been doing sponge baths in a basin with water heated on our little propane cooker, and washing dishes squatting on the floor in a bigger basin. Getting these things in place will make it a lot more comfortable for us, and me, and make it more appealing to invite people. I’m hoping to do some friend visits in the winter when I know I’ll have a lot of free weekends. 

On last weekend’s visit, we did a quick jaunt into Joshua Tree National Park. The boys sure do love rock scrambling. I have a book of JTNP hikes, and I’m excited to branch out a little and do some more difficult stuff there, more off the beaten path. I’ve asked for a compass for Christmas. 

This week is a week of half days due to parent-teacher conferences; I’m picking up the boys at about 12:45 each day. I’ve never dealt with this before since every previous year they were in after school care until normal times. I had Theo’s conference yesterday - as usual, good reports. He’s a good kid, gets along well with others, does well in math. His writing and reading isn’t his strong point - the teacher noticed he really doesn’t like to read, and says he hopes he can kick start a love of reading next semester when they tackle some Percy Jackson books. I hope so, too. Bobby used to be an avid reader but is less of one now - I mean really, books are no competition for the internet. I hardly know any adults - certainly any male adults - that actually like to read or do it regularly. Is there a future for reading fiction written on paper? Sometimes I wonder.

We’ve decided to take Bobby to the Darker Waves concert on Saturday - it’s going to be challenging. A long day at the beach in crowds, and now it appears it’s going to be raining. We’re taking a chance in bringing him - he might hate it and be miserable - but I had a spare ticket and thought this would be a good stretch for him; if nothing else, someday he’ll be able to tell people when he was 11 his parents took him to see Devo and The Psychedelic Furs and OMD and New Order; not many people his age will have had that experience. Theo, who couldn’t care less, will stay home with the babysitter and get the VR all to himself. Win/win?

My podcast is up!

This week has been a whirlwind of activity as my long-thought about podcast finally “launched”. I say launched in quotes because probably only me, my sister, and a couple of close friends have actually listened to it. But STILL.

My podcast is called Leaving Christian Science, and I’m filming them on zoom and then posting to YouTube and then audio versions to Spotify and Apple Podcasts. The YouTube link is here: https://youtube.com/@LeavingChristianSciencePodcast?si=wfugkalCGIDWdDvR

and IG handle is @leavingcspod

Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, here’s how it’s been for me: it’s been a steep learning curve, that I’m still climbing, and that was very intimidating at first. I had to find an editing program (thankfully there’s always a basic one on computers now, and I have years of editing experience from making my event DVDs, so the actual process of editing was a snap), find a voice recording program, find royalty-free music (after multiple requests, my bandleader never followed through, so I gave up. I’m really happy with what I found, though), navigate starting a YouTube channel and Spotify and Apple podcast accounts, start an IG account (by far the most intimidating to me, and still is). It’s been a lot, but I believe in the work enough that I just made myself push through. I now have two episodes published and a few short clip videos, which I had a blast putting together. I’ll definitely do more of these, since I realize a ninety minute podcast isn’t everyone’s cup of tea and they’d rather just have the highlights. 

So what is it, exactly, and what do I want from it? I mean naturally I’d like it if I had a decent community of listeners and was able to help people - ex-CS or not - I don’t want it to just sit there ignored. But I don’t expect to make money on it nor make it into a “hit” - I really just want it to be a resource for people. I personally enjoy long form conversational podcasts - I listen to one by ex-Scientologist Jon Atack every week in which he just has conversations with smart friends, and I always learn something new. I haven’t posted it in the ex-CS Facebook group yet - I want to make sure I have enough content so people don’t click on it and then forget about it because there’s not enough there to hold people’s interest. So I figure I’ll wait until I have one more podcast up and then put it more out there. 

The funny thing has been working this kind of project around family life, especially when family life involves other people using up the wifi bandwidth and making lots of noise, both things that are terrible for two hour zoom recordings. For my second interview, I set myself up in the attic and told the boys to stay off the VR (much to their despair). I’m going to have to interview people when they’re available, and it’s rarely going to be in that tiny window between the H leaving for work (11 AM) and me having to pick up the boys from school (now 2 PM). So the attic, originally intended as a playspace, may soon be my podcasting studio.

I feel good and revitalized and slightly frantic. We’re leaving for the desert today and I’m a little miffed I can’t spend my day contacting potential interviewees or working on more clips or developing the IG page that literally nobody looks at. But I feel inspired, which is a great feeling. I once heard a quote that “you’re not depressed, you’re just uninspired”, and for me often this is the case. Unless you’re doing something that inspires you, sometimes it can mimic depression, that blah feeling of just not being interested in anything. 

One super cool thing that happened was, when I set up the IG page, I figured I would start by following my favorite cult podcasts. Out of nowhere, my favorite anti-cult activist, Janja Lalich, started following me (I hadn’t followed her so she must have just seen me float by). I had to message her to say thanks for the follow, and she said you’re welcome, and then I told her I was watching her in the Twin Flames documentary and that I enjoy her work, and she said thanks. Omg! Janja Lalich and I had a conversation! Ahhhhh! 

So I’ve got my work cut out for me - the next couple of weeks will be difficult with the boys home by 1 each day due to parent-teacher conferences, and the week after being Thanksgiving break. I hope I can get two interviews in this week so I can at least have *some* content available to publish while I can’t create anymore. The holidays in general will be challenging time-wise, as I imagine a lot of people won’t be available for interviews, either. So the pace may slow down for a few weeks. But in the meantime, I’ve created this thing, and it’s out there, and I'm very proud of it.

Hallowe’en

It was a fully inflatable Halloween as both boys chose blow up costumes - Theo as a space rocket kid and Bobby as a gorilla. Clearly, I went as a chicken (non-inflatable).

Neither inflatable costume popped or slowly deflated like Theo’s dinosaur one last year, but Bobby, at least, decided he didn’t want an inflatable costume next year. He couldn’t see all night and moving around was difficult. I always imagined we’d be the kind of family to make our own clever costumes every year, but that’s yet another thing I’ve let go. For some reason Halloween always sneaks up on me, plus the fact that the kids actively don’t WANT clever homemade costumes. If they ever came to me with an idea and wanted me to implement it for them, I’d be all in. But they just aren’t those kinds of kids. I told Bobby yesterday how when I was (about) his age I went as a “bag lady”. Yes, that was the 80s, in which it was socially acceptable to wear a costume depicting homelessness for humor. I told him one of the most common kids’ costumes when I was a kid was to dress up as a “hobo”. My how times have changed.

I’m glad the kids are still invested in Halloween - for me, the fun ended around 11 or 12. But as I’ve said many times, I feel like kids these days are less in a hurry to grow up. Also, many child-like things - playing games, dressing up, having stuffies and toys - are no longer solely for small children. There were plenty of teenagers out last night, and not just to cause havoc like when I was young. They may have been high AF, but at least they were dressed up and having a good time. 

Today I dismantle the Halloween decorations, put away the costumes, make a promise to myself that for the first time ever I won’t spend the entire month of November slowly pilfering the boys’ candy, and settle in to the new month. I finally got flights to FL for Christmas by the hybrid method - flying there on Jet Blue and flying back on Alaska. It was the only way to not be stuck with a 6 AM flight returning. That’s a huge load off my mind. All of the holidays are now accounted for. Phew.