I will say it.  It was easier to pack to go on tour.  Now I am not counting the prep for tour the booking of the clubs, the contracts, the posters, and the endless phone calls. No I am talking about packing to leave.

When we toured it was usually for months. We’d leave in September and not return till December or we’d tour from March till June.  We’d skip the dead of winter because we didn’t want to be stuck in any winter weather. We would skip the summer because people tend to go away and don’t want to go to rock shows in the summer.

Packing for tour was easy.  I had me to worry about.  I started clothes shopping here and there for new stage clothes for months ahead of time. Then we’d get closer and we’d need enough day clothes to get through five days and then we’d stop to do laundry. I might need new contact lenses or I’d get some makeup.  I’d have to get bills paid in advance since there was no bill pay on the internet then but we’d pack the band stuff and I would sit with my husband as he prepared his guitars and counted his strings.

Then there is blog her.  My husband is an amazing person.  We both have things we do and don’t do in our relationship.  Yard work is on him.  He can fix almost anything. Heck he built our deck alone. He hates to prepare food and food shopping won’t happen.  He cooks if he has to but we needed food in the house to cook.  I needed to get clothes. I had to hire a babysitter to go clothes shopping. I am missing the gene that most women have that makes them happy to shop.  If I could get away with wearing jeans, baggy t-shirts, and some sort of comfortable shoes to everything everyday like a uniform I would.  I hate the fussing women are supposed to do over their appearance. I hate makeup but I wear it some. Luckily, I have good hair and I have a wash and wear do that is fairly nice.   I got that dumb chore done. I arrived home and the boys needed to do their home school summer school stuff.  I got dinner going and my nephew neighbor showed up.  He needed to eat, he had been away for a few weeks, and had no food in his house. I owe him big time for his help this summer so no big deal.

Off we went to get my hair cut.  The boys were remarkably well behaved but then again my hair cuts last mere minutes.  We arrived home and as they were getting ready for bed I started getting together stuff I need for the conference. Of course the boys undid pretty much everything I did.

Tomorrow it does not get any better. Cooking, Ryan’s has PT, my husband’s car is going into the shop, and I have to get my stuff together because I leave at 5am Thursday morning.

Yes, going on tour for three months is much easier than going to a three day conference.  The hard factor comes in the form of of two redheaded boys hellbent on thwarting any progress I make toward getting out of here.

I have a dear old friend S.  We worked in bars and were West Philly punker chicks together. In 1991 we worked in a particularly divey spot and decided we wanted to go to Europe together with Flag of Democracy who we were part of our circle of friends. I went and did a drug study at a pharmaceutical company for the money to go.  I have no idea what S did to get money together.  We flew on Pakistani Air to the Netherlands. We were way too poor for a train pass so we  hitchhiked everywhere. We would meet up here and there with FOD, knowing they would get us fed and a place to sleep.  When we arrived in Europe we wanted to go to Eastern Europe.  The Berlin Wall had fallen only months before. There were so many meaningful memories of that trip, but the time we spent in Berlin and Prague were incredible.  We stood in  Soviet-era food lines for fruit, let many people in a beer garden buy us sixteen cent beers because we were American, and were surrounded by people who protested everything openly daily just because they could finally let their voices be heard without repression.  I could go on and on about this trip.

S and I returned and she went off to travel some more.  She wound up meeting her current husband at a Rainbow Gathering right after our trip.  He was from California and she followed him there.

While I was with the band I can remember long conversations with S while sitting on curbs in the parking lot of Thorazine shows in Los Angeles where she now lives. My band would take over all the merch selling duties knowing I needed to catch up with S.   Our record label was in Los Angeles so we usually had a bunch of shows while we were out there. S would come to a few and it is the only time I saw her on the west coast.

I had Ryan and she came to visit. The kid thing really freaked her out and we did not talk for a few years until Aaron was about eighteen months old. She called to apologize about becoming so distant when I had Ryan and she was twenty weeks pregnant. When her daughter P was born I spent hours on the phone with her teaching her how to nurse her baby.  She has visited us every year she comes to town and my sons are getting old enough to remember S and her daughter P.  They love to point out Los Angeles on a map and say, That is where S and P live!!

Today S called.  She is in town!  We are going to party down like two middle aged women with young children do.  We are going to go to the swim club with our kids and  Cecily and her daughter.  We are going to talk about old times, current times, her new job after getting her Masters degree, Cecily and I will talk about Blog Her that starts this week, and we will swim with the kids.

The boys love P and Aaron and I are in our bathing suits at CHOP waiting for Ryan to get out of Occupational Therapy.

Our adventure awaits. I doubt it will be as exciting as our old adventures, but adventures like that are best left to the young.

I have a customer who I always thought to be intriguing.  I wanted to talk to this person but he was either introverted or not interested bar chat preferring his paper and beer to talk.  Suddenly after a few years of trying and just giving up, this customer and I have become acquainted.  He is an interesting sort. I like our conversations which are more age appropriate than the bar chatter I have with my 89 and the gang.

Last night he and I talked more than we had.  He was saying his son was turning thirteen this December and that he was kinda freaking out about it.  As he spoke my insides froze and I internally put my fingers in my ears and thought, oh no not my baby, my baby will never be thirteen.  I then promised my new favorite customer I would make sure to buy him a beer and some chips the week his baby turned thirteen, sharing in the pain of babies who grow too fast.  As we were having that conversation my co-worker came up to add to the conversation.  She is six months my senior but her daughter is a beautiful woman over twenty one who I remembered as a seven year old lanky girl.

This happened at the bar on Friday. On Saturday morning, mere hours after I left the bar, I woke Ryan up for his swim meet.  I said, “baby get up it’s time for your meet.”  He replied, ” Mom I am a tween not a baby.”  I froze.  All the conversation of the night before rang true.  I quickly said, “till September you are still a kid, after nine I guess you are a tween, but for always you will be my baby.”

He scrambled out of bed and into his bathing suit as my heart broke a little.

I remember the 1972 Olympics. Yeah, I know, I am dating myself. I dreamed for four years afterwards that I wanted to grow up to be a combination of Mark Spitz and Olga Korbut.  Oh the Olympics.  I love to watch the rarely televised sports.  I remember something about every Olympics.  In 1976 I was with my family visiting my Aunt and Uncle in Virginia.  In 1992 and 1996 I remember watching from the bar as I worked.

Today we had the Olympics on the TV as we were getting some chores done around the house after the early swim meet.  The boys were ok with the volleyball that was on but when a highlight of swimming came on the kids oooohed and ahhhhed.  Ryan declared loudly, I will swim that well someday!!  I told him he could but it takes a ton of hard work.  He was tickled that one of the top American swimmers name is Ryan.  Aaron was transfixed as well and said, in an awed voice, will I ever do butterfly like that?  I said he might if he kept with it.

Today we went to the A champs.  It was a tough meet for us.  The boys had to wait three hours between events and it drove them crazy.  They are used to meets where they swim and about thirty to forty five minutes later they swim again.  It was hot even though we were in the shade.  The meet was HUGE.  It had Ryan’s sensory issues all kicked off.  Both boys were bored and didn’t want to do anything they brought.  They were intent on whining as loud and as long as they could, and fighting.  I had half a mind to leave but I was the parent of half of the eight and under relay.  I was working on two and a half hours sleep.  Yeah, I think it was the worst conditions we could of been under.

For Aaron it was a tough meet.  He disqualified the medley relay by swimming the wrong stroke.  He was supposed to swim breaststroke and he swam freestyle. WHOOPS.  He did well in the free relay but even then his attention was not on the pool.  If this had been the season last winter, Ryan would of swam terribly.  He had to wait in a long crowded gang to swim, the extreme heat, all of it would have really set him up to swim badly.  Instead Ryan swam like his feet were on fire. He had a relaxed powerful stroke that miraculously matured by leaps and bounds this summer. His attention was on the pool, not the crowd, the weather, or anything else that would distract him in the past.  Our relay did not do well but Ryan gained on the frontrunners even though he was so far behind to begin with.  The fact he could pay attention after the hellish wait, the crowds which are just so hard for him, and all the other adversities had me beaming with pride.  Today he saw the A swimmers in our region and what he could attain.  He can watch his namesake on TV and see where swimming goes for a special few.

I can’t wait to sit with the boys and watch the Olympic swimming.  Dream big kids the sky is the limit in anything you do.