Going green

I’m in the midst of various projects that will hopefully turn out to be money savers/good investments down the road. It’s been a ton of meetings for estimates and big decisions, with lots more to come. But for now, I have a permit for solar panels in the works (hopefully to be installed by the end of the year for a big fat tax break), concurrent with a rewiring of the entire house (hooray for grounded three-prong outlets, dimmers and updated lighting!), and at long last a hybrid car for me. 

The boyfriend is most likely going to buy my leased car - he qualified for a loan at the dealer - and I’m going to try to get into a lease of a Niro hybrid. I’ve promised myself for years now that my next car will be at least a hybrid; research tells me all-electric cars just don’t have the range I need yet, but may by the time this lease would be up. It’s hard to imagine that; or that by the time this potential lease is up at least one of my boys will be out of a car seat! 

So all of these things take a bit of money up front but will save me in the long run; by spring my electric bill will disappear, and my car gas bill cut at least in half. And I don’t have to worry about my house burning down due to ancient wiring. 

The boys have been exceptionally...shall we say...”energetic” lately, and it’s exhausting. They are so much more enjoyable when they’re not bouncing off the walls. It’s so much easier when kids are littler and you don’t need them to do things like homework and practice violin and be places on time...I feel like every sentence out of my mouth involves phrases like “hurry up!”, “this is taking wayyyyy too long”, or “we’re going to be late!” But I suppose this is the lament of all parents; not unique to me. I once saw an internet meme of two snails slowly moving across a floor which said “my kids getting ready in the morning.” Add to this a younger brother who still is iffy about eating in general, hasn’t really grasped consequences, and needs everything done for him still, and life can get pretty complicated. Yet still we make it to school more than on time every day, do all the “crazy hair day” stuff you’re expected to do, get all the homework done, brush the teeth, take the baths. Looking around I feel like I’m doing about average compared to the other parents (parenting over-achiever I am not, as I’m sure you’ve gleaned by now); better in some areas and worse in others. Bobby could read better and Theo could speak better and they could both be cleaner, but they are both kind, well-behaved boys who are gentle with babies and animals, so I guess I’m doing something right!

Pumpkins!

Pumpkins! Can I just say how much easier days like this are with a three-year-old and five-year-old than younger kids? All around us were hugely pregnant women managing their toddlers' complete meltdowns. I was like, grrrrl...been there! Here's to kids that use the potty, (mostly) eat their food, can play together, climb without falling, and (mostly) listen - hooray!

Taking care of business

In my quest to properly distribute this year's income, I'm starting to move forward with a few projects. The kitchen design is taking forever - the kitchen designer I enlisted said it would take two weeks for some rough plans; three weeks later he admitted to me he hadn't even started. Which, according to friends, is fairly typical. Coming up on the end of the fiscal year and the holidays, during which I'd rather not have my entire house torn apart, it just doesn't seem feasible to even attempt to start a kitchen remodel this year. However, I can probably do it early next year when my income starts up again in February.

In the meantime I still need to spend that money, so today I bought a new washer/dryer to replace my 20+ year-old stacker which leaks dryer exhaust all over the house every time I use it. I'm excited to see how my life changes with a large capacity high efficiency washer and dryer. It gets delivered in a week. 

I also got an estimate started for a complete house rewiring from a highly recommended female electrician (yay women). I shudder to imagine what that's going to cost me, but it really has to happen. We're dealing with dangerous knob and tube wiring over here. She can also get me a new solar-ready panel, which is the next big project I'm looking at.

In true mom fashion, I invested in $40 worth of Halloween decor at the dollar store. Since we don't get trick-or-treaters here, it never really occurred to me to decorate. But I knew the kids would get a kick out of it (they did) so it was fun for all of us. In this instance I added in some marquis lettering from Target for a bit of a political message:

Last week I started to feel myself slipping into a bit of a depression. Feeling overwhelmed by all the changes coming up, never feeling quite rested or recovered from the event, and various other things, sent me into a bit of a tailspin. I found myself lingering in bed too long and being generally impatient and ill-tempered, with the ever-present mantra of "I'm so depressed, I don't feel good" playing over and over in my head.

At a certain point I had to just take matters into my own hands and have a conversation with myself. "You can continue with this and make your kids miserable and ruin your relationship, or you can knock it off. But, you do you, boo." I realized that as much as I preferred to wallow that I had to pull myself out of it for the sake of the people around me. I'm not saying everything is so perfect now, but the intrusive thoughts have stopped and I feel hopeful about the future, which means the veil of depression has mostly lifted due to some concerted brain rewiring on my part over a couple of days. Let's hope I can keep this up. 

Espain

Guess what? I have no jet lag. It's a minor miracle, considering the fact that last time I came back from Spain I suffered for a couple of weeks after. I feel so normal, in fact, that Spain now seems like some weird dream I had. 

It was a good trip - I ate mountains of cheese and olives and bread, enjoyed good company (surprisingly we ended up having many friends at this event), and generally had a swell time. 

The event itself was not like anything we had done before - it was a competition of four different swing bands, in which one was voted the winner by the audience at the end of the weekend. We had to "battle" each band each night by playing songs back and forth on stage. At one point we had pulled out one of our "killer dillers", and the other band, which in my opinion was a bit of a wedding band, not knowing how to top us, decided to play Bruno Mars' "Uptown Funk". Which of course got the crowd going, as any modern funk song will over rinky-tinky 1930s swing music. They basically brought a gun to a knife fight. My bandleader picked me to follow it, which at first had me kind of freaked out, but then I thought, "no, fuck that. We're the best at what we do, we don't have to pander, and we live and breathe this music." So I strode out there in my eighty-year-old dress and killed it.

The other band won the audience pick. But our band won all the musicianship awards which were voted by other musicians. In your FACE, crappy wedding band.

Hopefully this trip has put us on the European scene a bit - one friend there said he'd try to get us to play a big event in Budapest next year, and we made good friends with this Swedish band who felt the same way we did about the importance of playing authentic swing. My bandleader said he would not do this event again. But we both really enjoyed being in Madrid, and I'm glad I went. 

As usual the boys both looked taller, skinnier, and seemed more sophisticated when I got home. Nothing came of the potential bullying incident - I messaged his teacher about it, and she said she'd look into it, but I haven't heard anything since, and Bobby said the kids don't play the "name game" anymore and he says he plays with some of those boys. It's also anti-bullying month at school. Was this just some minor incident? Perhaps!

Today I saw a financial advisor. Learned a lot of good things and have a plan goin forward to handle what will hopefully be a new level of income in my life. Mainly, I have a lot of work ahead of me - I have to get my act together and do proper bookkeeping, payroll (for myself, anyway), change my LLC to an S corp, etc etc. New tax person, a whole new system. Pretty much everything I've been doing for two decades has to change. The word "daunting" comes to mind.

The good news is, he gave me the green light to renovate my kitchen. Or, you know, just hand the money over to Trump in April. I could do that. Not. 

Off again

Tomorrow morning I leave for Spain. I am both looking forward to it and dreading it. The gig itself might be a bit of a nightmare - this is a dance-tangential event, so we're not dealing with "our people" and the communication/organization of it has been tricky to say the least. When you're a bandleader and you invite six people to another country with you, you want them to have a good experience. I'm nervous. However...we're going to Madrid. I haven't been to Spain since 2004 and haven't been anywhere in Europe for a long time. Surely there's some fabulous food and sightseeing in my future if nothing else.

Last night I finally cleared out my 300+ post-event email inbox. I made an appointment with a financial advisor for the week I get back so I don't take a bath in taxes this year. He may advise me against doing the kitchen. That project may end up saved for 2018. 

Yesterday Bobby casually mentioned that he was called into the principal's office at school to talk about kids playing "the name game" - i.e. calling him names. He said "at the end they say Marry your sister's butt, but I don't have a sister, so..." I was pretty upset that kids had been ganging up and calling him names, but he seemed unperturbed. I messaged his teacher about it to get a more clear story (his was muddled to say the least), but she has not written back. How do you know when kids are just suffering silently with things, as kids so often do, or when there genuinely isn't anything to worry about? I worry a lot that he has friends and is enjoying school...way more than I worry about his academic development. That says way more about me than it says about him. 

With the seemingly endless requests for supplies, volunteering, donations, involvement and attention between the two preschools, the after school program, and Bobby's school, I never feel like I'm doing enough. Was this much asked of our parents? I think not.

So tomorrow I leave to fly halfway around the world until Monday. I'm looking forward to leaving the drudgery of every day life with two small children behind - the early wake ups, the food preparation, the wiping, always with the wiping...but am also not looking forward to being so far away and missing them and their sweet little faces. Sigh. Can't live with 'em...

September

I must have been sicker than I thought. Most of my close friends were bed ridden for days after the event; I feel somewhat normal now, but still have a horrid guttural cough. I had to cancel a singing gig Friday night and have tried not to push myself too much. Which basically means I am just doing the bare minimum at the moment. But at least this explains how exceptionally out of it I've been after this year's event.

Things are looking up for next year, though. I have lined up an excellent registration program which will alleviate three big jobs for me - all the paperwork before the event (countless admin hours - I mean really, in the hundreds of hours), I no longer have to assign contest numbers ahead of time (typically a three day job for me), and I no longer have to sit at the front desk for several hours each day during the event dealing with contest issues. What this will mean for me is twofold - freed from the drudgery of paperwork, before the event I can focus on more details that currently get forgotten; and freed of the contest coordinating I have to do during the event, I might *gasp* actually be able to enjoy some of the event. 

I'm so amazed by how simple and inexpensive this upgrade is going to be, I'm actually pretty mad at myself that I never thought of it before. It's not that I didn't think of it; I just thought it was out of my reach financially. Still, I wonder why it doesn't occur to me to fix problems or upgrade systems sometimes. I'm sure this has something to do with the learned helplessness from my childhood. And that pisses me off. 

Still, I am excited to enter my third decade of business ownership with all these cool new systems in place. Honestly, it's going to change everything. 

I had another kitchen designer over today. I feel as "meh" about this one as I did the last. I think I need to accept the fact that I am dealing with a tiny little space, which means there's not much you can do to it to make it "dazzling", which is what I want. In the end it's just four short walls, and like it or not you have to squeeze in a refrigerator, stove, sink, dishwasher, cabinets and counter space. Part of me wants to just say "fuck it" and cheaply replace the cabinets and leave it at that. But the money is available now so I want to spend it now, because who knows when I'll have money again. 

No word from my two lawsuit threateners (the ones I banned from attending my event). The one about the yard lady had a bizarre conclusion - she had sent me two written letters saying simply that she fell on my property; I had my insurance company call her, and she told them that all she wanted was $100 I supposedly owe her for yard work from years ago. Huh? First of all, I know I don't owe her any money, and if she did want money for some imagined unpaid bill, why the fuck didn't she just ask for it? What is wrong with people? Anyway, I sent her a check with a note saying I had no idea I owed her money and that I am sorry she fell. Hopefully that'll be the end of it!

Tomorrow Bobby is off school so we will go get long overdue haircuts, go to the farmer's market which we never get to do, and take him to the Y's play area while I sneak in a workout. I hope he doesn't notice all the toys I donated there!

XX

I keep delaying posting about this year's event in the hopes that I'll be less exhausted and therefore more positive later, but at this point I feel like I'm going to continue to live in this state of extreme exhaustion for quite some time, so I might as well forge ahead.

The event went well. Everyone was pleased, money was made, people were inspired. No major nor minor calamities other than some very loud construction going on at the hotel and check-in snafus (i.e., nothing having to do with me). We somehow shuffled through thirty performance teams (we usually have ten), almost forty Showcase routines (back in the day we'd have six or seven), hundreds of competitors, and almost 350 more people than we had last year (so we're at double our average capacity). I felt as though I was barely hanging on by my fingernails; I rued the fact that it was so stressful and all business the whole time so I never had even a moment to stop and let it sink in how amazing it all was; I never got to talk to or bond with people. But every year I have the same regrets, and every year I forget that I have those regrets. Every year I feel like it's too much and I can't handle it, and am surprised/disturbed by what a non-functional wreck I am afterwards for weeks. And yet it's always the same. And I always forget.

The week before the event my ancient air conditioning quit right at the start of a major triple digit heat wave - the whole family was subjected too almost 100 degree inside temperatures for several days before we were able to get the system completely replaced (on the day my event started). It was scary and dangerous and made that last week of intense event prep pure hell. 

So much happened it's hard to even keep track. My contest tabulator quit - not out of anger, but out of the understanding that he needed to focus more on his real job at home and that his antiquated computer system was on its last legs. But within days I had an excellent replacement, so no harm done there. 

I had arranged for an overflow hotel next door since my room block sold out early - days before the event I came up a few rooms short and so they charged me $600; then much to my horror the day after the event they charged me $10,000 for all the people who booked rooms and then never showed up. Due to all the screw ups at the main hotel we are trying to negotiate to get that bill lowered - and by "we" I mean the boyfriend, since I do not have the stomach to call up and threaten to break contracts, etc. He offered to make the call for me and I let him, but not without a lot of grumbling and feeling emasculated on my part. Still, I'm smart enough to know that sometimes it's better to use an outside person who is not emotionally or otherwise attached to your business to do your negotiating for you. And so I did. Now we're just waiting to see what they come back with. 

Another stressor was I went into the event under the threat of three lawsuits - one which now seems likely, the other two which are less so. One was from a guy I banned who sent a lame letter in fake legalese threatening to sue for his right to attend my event (there's no such thing); the other is another guy I banned who claims he has a slander suit against me based on screenshots of conversations I had with someone explaining why I banned him (and this girl who gave him those screenshots - I want to punch her in her fucking face). The third, and most likely to actually go to court, is from this crazy old lady in the neighborhood who was doing yard work for me some years ago. She sent me two letters - one mailed, one hand delivered, claiming she fell on my property and was in the hospital for three weeks. No dates, no explanation. She hadn't worked for me for at least two years, so I don't understand why this is coming up now, or what she wants. But I called my insurance company and they told me I have to contact her since she is clearly being advised to put me "on notice" and is plotting something. They will write her a letter asking for more details and then we'll see what we can see. But I think it's clear that she's going to try to shake me down. So, that's going to be fun.

Upon return from the event I immediately had to jump into mom mode, hop out of bed at 6 AM and get kids to school, etc. It's been fucking brutal. The early mornings, the homework, the constant attention these schools demand (not a fucking day goes by when there aren't more forms to sign, checks to write, donations to make, supplies to buy, projects to work on, etc), are taking a huge toll, and right now I'm just exhausted and emotionally drained enough to be pretty resentful about it. I'm sorry, but I didn't know that when my kid started kindergarten that that would become yet another full time job for me. Yet another way our parents had it way easier - show up to the Christmas pageant, sign off on some report cards, and you're done. Works for me. 

For now I have hired the babysitter to look after Theo today because I am sick AF - shaky, chills, sore throat, foggy - and I desperately need to just lie down for five minutes. It will probably be a full month before I feel even remotely human again.