The Longest Summer Ever

Having a family is a wonderful thing. The spouse, the kids, the dog. It's the American dream. This summer my family moved from Burbank to West Los Angeles. While we loved Burbank, my hubby had an hour and 20 minute commute to work in Century City twice a day. Moving was the best solution to retrieving those 20 plus hours he was spending on the road each week.

Burbank schools were dismissed for the summer in May. So, the very next week we moved to our new neighborhood in West LA and were now in LAUSD. We moved into a cozy home only two doors down from the new school our sons would be attending. No sooner had we carried in our last box of belongings when were we greeted with school announcements coming from the loud speaker, and insane parents dropping off and picking up their little bratty bundles of dirt and snot, and the realization that the LAUSD kids were still in session.

What did this mean??? It meant that since our old district had released the kids in May, and this new school wasn't due to release til a month later, that I was in for the longest summer of my life!!! Of course, I thought to myself, being the super mom that I am, this will be no problem. This will be a summer full of play dates, day camps and swimming lessons. We'll meet new people, and the kids will meet new friends and it will be a great summer. Fast forward 15 weeks....SIGH, yeah right. What's that saying? "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions". Well, that's exactly where I ended up. Unpacking, painting, traveling to visit family, our dog thinking it could fly and jumping from the roof (I'll elaborate on that later in a later blog-she was completely fine), and simply trying to get our barrings in our new surroundings confiscated our entire summer and we had not one play date, not one swimming lesson, and only one week of soccer camp that I forced my kids to attend in 100 plus degree weather despite their protests. Well, maybe not exactly Hell, but you get the idea.

During all this, mind you, I still had my auditions to do at my agency. Some of them I was expected to do from home, yet with two noisy boys, that was mostly impossible. On some days I arrived at my auditions with the boys in tow because I had no one to watch them, no day camps to send them to, no play dates to pawn them off on. Once or twice my wonderful husband would watch them at his office for an hour or so, but already feeling like the worst mother in the world, I didn't want to feel like an awful wife too and ask for more. So, there the boys (who are 5 and 7) would sit with me in the lobby of my agent's office, sometimes for 2 hours or more as I waited my turn to read a few lines of script with the hopes of being chosen among hundreds of other voices and make a few bucks.

"Can we go home now???" "When is this gonna be over???" "Is it your turn yet, Mom???"

Torture. Yes, you could call it torture...for all three of us.

"Maybe tomorrow I'll record from home", I think to myself.

"CRASH". "BANG".

Squeals of laughter and screaming rip me from my revere. I duck my head out of my vocal booth and yell, "Keep it down you guys! Mommy is trying to record"! More laughter.

We are now a mere 5 days away from the first day of school and I stand in my vocal
booth trying to do an audition without noise from my boys. Realizing it's hopeless, I turn off my microphone and decide that my sons have won this battle. As I listen to their feckless laughter and clanging around, I smile. I look around, taking in our new home. We're still not done unpacking by the way. The boys bound down the stairs and greet me with hugs and guilty smiles. I can't help but be grateful. I am truly living the American dream.