put your pom-poms on

recently my friend em conquered her second ironman race in madison, wisconsin. man it was a beautiful day. i've seen her do this once before in 2009 and it a little bit changed my whole life. 

it was a hot day in september. about 87 degrees. that's a great day for hanging out but not for exerting monumental effort in no shade for between 11 to 17 or so hours like the competitors did. i had stayed with em in her room the night before- ate with her, talked with her,  prayed for her body and her safety and her joy. she went to bed really early, and got up earlier than she had to so she could shower, prep, and give the day to the Lord. 

the swim start was like nothing i had ever seen. over 2500 people in an expansive blue dish, heads lightly bobbing treading water ducking around in the final surging anticipation of the relief of a finish. the gun blows and all at once the whole mess of them explodes in a frothy mixer. the early crowd cheers and sips coffee, squinting vainly to pick out their one beloved in the infinity of rubber caps and feet and arms, secretly almost wishing that they, too, were in the water, kicking and jostling and gasping.

i was cheering too. and during the bike, when she whizzed by 2 times, i cheered. and during the run, i zigged and zagged my way through the funky little streets so i could be at any possible point to see her and cheer for her again and cheer for her again.

the cheering changed me way down on the inside of my little soul.  i had never really all-out cheered for anyone before. i was standing at the finish line jumping up and down screaming and snotting my pigtails off in a cathartic sunburned frenzy for no reason except my friend had worked super hard to get there and for that i wanted her to do well. for once for once for once i wasn't even in the equation. i had nothing to gain. i wasn't jealous. i wasn't experiencing any creative satisfaction from watching her. i just wanted her to rock that ironman because she wanted to rock that ironman. i wrenched a little bit more free from bad stef that day and thank God for it. there's nothing so sad as a girl who can't cheer for her friend. 

or her man. so much the little yoko can get bitter about the race she has to run. feeling like nobody is zigging around cheering her on. like she's the one who deserves all the praise. take the yoko out and be free. we are the ones who need to cheer. we need to really see how great it is what they're doing and how much they love it and how they get better when we're not factoring ourselves in all the freaking time. they just want to rock and all they want is for us to yell loud, to cheer without reserve, all they want is just another yoko.

you're such a yoko

you're such a yoko when:

• unless they are in new york, LA, or austin, or you are actually on your way to the show, you dont ever really know where they are playing that night.
• you have carried an amp after 3 in the morning more than 4 times in order to start the process.
• there is a trailer parked in your driveway that used to belong to Jeff Pezzati.
• there is also a passenger van parked in your driveway.
• you've manned the merch baby.
• you're married to the guy. thats an automatic yoko.
• you don't interrupt the settling. 
• in lean years everyone gets t-shirts and cds for their birthdays.
• you hear it first.
• sometimes tour rhymes with manure.
• you never ever ever never tell the random bagger at the grocery store that your husband is in the band on the front of your daughter's t-shirt even when he freaks out that she's wearing it.
• you are forced to listen to the brilliant and unusual harmonies in the song Yellow Submarine twice in the year 2011. 
• your 6 year old girl is an elvis fanatic.
• your name appears in or is the title of one of his songs. 
• you let your mother-in-law collect the press clippings
• you are the final stop.
• you dont even have to read this list.
• you just are just another yoko.                 

burn upon re-entry

its fantastically romantic to feel like you can't live without the one you love, but if you're a yoko and you park your heart at that space station you're bound for misery and heartache and wet pillows and who wants that not me. when the van pulls away and rides out of site, i park my heart in a waiting zone. the valet takes it to an undisclosed yet safe location. its in an emotional bermuda triangle. i learn survival tactics and i go about my biz and i do what i do and i do it well. and fairly quickly, if i let it, desperateness dissolves and i am whole. but this freedom of autonomy can dangerously threaten to eclipse the duet that is josh and stef, and therefore his re-entry into clark street has to be handled very carefully.

re-entry has always been a huge challenge in space travel. NASA does all this preparation, training, calculating, building, maintenance, waiting, and finally the nauts go on the mission to study the weight of an egg-sized moon rock and when its over: mission accomplished? nope. they still have to get home. they still have to have to worry about re-entry.

according to the modern classic authority on all things spacey Apollo 13 (the movie), the little shuttle pod thing has to return into the atmosphere at precisely the right speed, right angle, and at the right velocity. it's heat shield has to be intact, its cooling system working, its oxygen tanks at appropriate levels. if all these things are working, then and only then can they can re-enter the earth's atmosphere and drop into one of the oceans so they can be hooked up to a chopper and flown to the nearest hyatt regency or whatever.

that's how delicate it is when my man comes in off the road. how is he gonna re-enter here? is his heat shield functional or is intense emotion of the homestead atmosphere gonna burn him out? does he have sufficient oxygen to get through or are we suffocating him? how's my mood? his state of mind? my vibe? are we gonna be able to interface at this galactic level?

we both know its weird so we let it be weird. we're face to face. he's no longer a figment of my ear, brain, and dreams... he's sitting in the yellow chair taking up actual space and oxygen and food wanting to know what movie we're going to watch later. its trippy lemme tell ya. i feel like swatting him to see if he'll yelp. then i'll know if he's real or if i'm making him up. mostly i just stare at him and listen to the debrief. i love the debrief. i want to know it all. every little thing. so he talks and talks until he gets hungry. then i mildly panic.

the thing is i sort of forgot how to make food. its funny that that's the big deal. that rut is hard to shake as yokos know only too well. so i get a little ornery after a tour: "what, now i have to cook? what am i even going to make?" mostly we just make a big salad together. i'm not even going to mention cleaning. that skill dies a sweet death every time josh walks out the door. so pretty much i'm lazy and messy when he's gone and his return only serves to illuminate those little weaknesses. ah well. time to shape up.

i asked josh what's the hardest thing about being off tour. it's that every day out there has a definite purpose, a goal, a summit to prepare for and everything you do is in anticipation of this high-adrenaline event. he plays the show and achieves the goal and one more city gets rocked. its like every day he has his own little mount everest.

then he comes home and is man enough to know there are some other peeps he has to rock and he brings presents and love and after a day and a half we all wonder how we lived without him for so long. he knows just where he belongs and we all grin and sigh and flutter around the leader of this pack. daddy's home and he's mine and i am so totally without shame and without regret... just another yoko.

ode to the van

no band can exist without a van. the van is the hive, the coop, command central. it is the control tower, headquarters, nerve center. it is the crib.

a few days ago judge judy was on one of the tvs at the club where i work out. i took one look at the defendant and i thought "he's in a band". he was just a short guy with a plaid shirt wearing a beard, but maybe yokos can always tell i dont know. he had that look in his eye. he was the defendant and boy if he and the plaintiff weren't arguing about a band van.

thats just perfect. triple ha!

one guy lent his van to another guy so he could take it on tour with his band but the van needed a new alternator and windshield before it was tour ready so the dude gave the guy $600 to get the stuff fixed but the other guy didnt fix it all the way then the guy took it on tour and got a bunch of tickets and now the dude wants money for the tickets but the guy already gave him money to kind of rent the van from him but they're bros so it should have all gone down kosher but it didnt because man, there's nothing easy about the van.

the van's proudest characteristic is that it is huge. it takes up practically our whole driveway and we have a weirdly long driveway. it sits there bombasting like a monolithic t-rex waiting for whom it may devour. it marinates there pondering its own inherent value, bellowing its worth for all to see and hear.

the thing is, the van carries the rock and it wont let you forget it. it knows that you are a band, and you need a van, so its gonna do everything it possibly can to make sure you appreciate it and treat it right. its a relationship. the van will carry the band, but the band must pay the van. there are no freebies. in one visit to the shop the van might demand without blushing new brakes, an alternator, new air-conditioning, and a tune-up. and the amount of times it has been loaded in and loaded out with gear would shock your grandmother. i dont help with that. rarely will i carry an amp unless i absolutely have to. what am i a roadie?

man but we've had some good times in there.

recently we drove the van to Sparta, IL to take our kids to see willie. it was prob their only chance to see him since... well i'm not talking about that. we stopped at Funks Grove for maple syrup on the way down. we had put a futon mattress in the back of the van and each kid got a seat to themselves and we camped at a rest stop after the show. that's one they'll never forget. see? its good for something.

hold on a minute, if i'm even just talking about the van i need to stop and get gas.

there's a mysterious quality about the inside of a band van. what happens in there when we're not around? what do they talk about do they talk about us? who's at the wheel and what are they listening to? what are they seeing where are they going what are they eating and wearing and saying? what are they saying? what are they saying? what are they saying saying saying? these are questions you should never ask but if you do they wont get answered anyway. its not for you its for them and thats just fine they're just a bunch of boys and you're just another yoko.

dubble bubble

the comic book illustration that exists in my head of justanotheryoko's world has a lot of bubbles in it. bubble: a small globule of gas in a thin liquid envelope. that's me. a small globule of gas. in jay's world, everyone lives in a bubble: a gas pocket protected by a spherical watery envelope. these bubbles are of your own making. in your bubble is your life, everything you do and see exists inside your own bubble. because other people have their own bubble too, really we're all just bouncing bubbles around like a bubble bath party.

when you leave your house, you bring your bubble with you, even if you go all the way to France. you are always in the middle of your bubble. sometimes, when you are friends with another human person, your bubble attaches to theirs for a while while y'all are having a BBQ, then after dessert you go home and your bubbles detach. if you're good enough friends you might exist in the same globule of gas for awhile until you find out they're sharing information about you to whomever they feel like, then you may have to make the choice to divide your bubble. that's called a bubble-birth. sometimes it hurts, but its for the best. or you could just forgive them, that would be graceful of you. being depressed is when you wish your bubble were bigger, or smaller, or more crowded with stuff, or even had different stuff in it. these are just some bubble facts.

when you're married, you exist in the same bubble. instead of you being in the center of your bubble yourself, your top person is in the middle of it and you are standing right next to him. unless he, by some chance, decides to go on a west coast tour. then your bubbles have to gingerly separate and you become a dubble bubble and are floating far far away from each other in totally different air pockets of the space-time continuum.

in josh's bubble there are legendary punk-rock musicians, actors from the stage and screen, tatoo artists and drum techs, califonia cuisine, ringo's suit from a hard days night, walls of noise, audrey hepburn's sidewalk star, stage diving, scenic views, city scapes, brutal drives, and stinky boys in a van.

i have a very different bubble. since josh bubbled out and we became a dubble bubble, it's like the universe has shifted to the left 3 degrees, dissolved, and re-formed. its like he got raptured into rock world. hey, wait, there used to be a man standing there making me a salad with avocado on the side. wait, i used to have to watch Talladega Nights. wait, someone used to think i was pretty cute and darn funny.

sustaining truth: the thing that connects my bubble to josh's bubble is the spirit of God. that is the air we breathe inside our spheres, and how our bubbles stay peacefully wistfully ardently afloat while we are apart. we may be living in separate bubbles for a while but we are walking the same way with the one true living God. if we weren't doing that there wouldn't be a dubble bubble right now, or a single bubble with us in it, there would just be two separate globules of gas floating far far away like loose balloons. believe what you want, but without Jesus i wouldn't be here, with a husband and a family and a dog and a cat. i wouldn't have the life i live with the man i live it with. i wouldn't be just another yoko.

punishers

there are the fans.

there are the super-fans.

there are the punishers.

fans: fans are cool. they show up, they dig the band, they know the songs, they buy the merch. they will drive up to 2 hours to see a show even if its not their first one. they clap and cheer and are generally well-balanced music lovers who have found something they like, and are willing to put a little effort into soaking it in. after the show they nod and smile and pleasantly get in their cars and bop away. they are the fans. love the fans. one out of every 500 fans suddenly and unexpectedly morphs into a superfan.

superfans: superfans make it fun. in hindsight. most of the time. superfans will drive 7 or more hours to see a show. they come to the club early with an offer to take them all out to pizza. they show up during sound check with a batch of homemade oatmeal cookies. they grab the set lists off the stage after the show and have intense talks with brad the merch guy. they know all the words to all the songs and are on very intimate terms with a few tracks on a record or two. they wait around after the show to get autographs and photos and to attempt to engage in any small conversation with any of the guys, trying desperately to appear like normal people, not freaky fans, and certainly not punishers.

punishers: punishers take my breath away. when they emerge from the cocoon that is their private life out into the open air, they know what they want and will do almost anything to get it. they are tunnel-visioned, focused on one thing and one thing only: to connect with the band. these people want,on some deep level, to force a bandmember into a very meaningful relationship and they want that to happen immediately. getting an autograph isn't enough, getting a picture wont cut the grey poupon, no way. they always want more/ that's the jelly in the donut. if they radar-lock on one of the guys and wind up having a super-awkward "conversation", this will not appease. they will continue to lurk in the shadows with wild shining eyes, hungry, following, pursuing, determined to have one more interaction, make one more connection with someone.

if a punisher isn't receiving the response they had envisioned for 10,000 lonely hours in their room, they get weirdly offended and will start to accuse the punished of something crazy like they're a jerk and think they're so great and don't take time to talk to people. this will all happen before the band, finally having loaded out, with a collective sigh of relief, lands in the safety of the bomb shelter that is the van, shellshocked and questioning their very existence. wondering if its worth it.

the band is being punished for being a good band. punished by the punishers.

anyone can be a punisher about anything. if a person always wants more and never lets up, when a person is never satisfied no matter what, they are a punisher.

they are not, in any sense of the word, by any stretch, in any country, just another yoko.

just another mr. rogers

does anyone else think i'm ignoring my kids here? its possible they haven't gotten the wordspace they deserve, but i'm assuming you know what the reality is so i dont have to always go into it. the reality is that they're not getting the cyber-attention because they get all my other attention in every other way. so maybe i'm reserving this space a little bit. like a date with myself where i dont have to think about it.

so what are we on day 3 of 18 or do i count the day he left i dont know... but the kids are so fine. my main objective in claiming victory over this time with them is twofold: stay out of the house for a fat slice of each day, and morph into a modern-day Fred Rogers.

I've been thinking about mister rogers the past couple of days. he was a bit creepy, a bit anal, a bit too mild-mannered, but he really had great sweaters. what i wouldn't give for one of those red zip-up cardigans right now you don't even know. i'm an avid cardiganologist.

mister rogers could take you in, oh yes he could. he could pull you slowly and gently into his world and make you believe you lived there in that little house. feel like you really were hanging up your sweater, switching your shoes, feeding the fish, taking the cheerful little trolley into the long dark tunnel arriving in the Land of Makebelieve. where the quirky drama happened.

the other way cool thing fred did was go on field trips. he'd go to the bakery and talk to the baker and see how the baker did his baking, or to the violin factory to see how the violins were made, or the candy factory, or wherever in his little special neighborhood fred wanted to explore and share. wherever he went, you went too. you and fred, you went together, wherever fred would go.

i'm trying a little too hard to be that side of fred rogers with my kids- a frantic julie mccoy field trip maker. thinking they need to be distracted from maybe being sad, i've been whizzing them all over, visiting and playing and camping, seeing dogs and pools and friends and libraries and bike rides and is it possible that even though i'm with elliot and phoebe alldayeveryday i miss my kids a little bit? i want them to love it here, with me, in our own little house with the pink kitchen and shady backyard and a daddy on the run and us.

tomorrow we'll have our own little Land of Makebelieve on clark street for one day. being here on our own but together. being sad if we want to be sad. it is a big deal.

its not new but i'm still making my way around this whole thing. i'm trying to figure out how to be their mama and even as much, how to be just another yoko.

fone freak-out

never call your man / when he's in the van

when he's in the van/ never call your man

never call your man/ when he's in the van

when he's in the van/ never call your man

he's always in the van


(yokos, you do the math)

when your man is on tour, your phone is your worst enemy. nothing good can come out of that thing. its only a tease. you think its a lifeline connecting you to your one true love, but that's a lie from the pit. its a vehicle for illuminating unrealized expectations. its a little evil instrument that allows you to hear what he says, but you can't see him when he says it.

HEARING minus SEEING = CRAPPY CONVERSATIONS

i have released all expectations from my phone. i no longer hold her close at all times, hoping for a buzz from Omaha, or Denver, or Salt Lake City, or anywhere in this massively huge country. Why is America so behemolific??? If we lived in france, and josh was like "I think I'll tour around the country for a while" he could be home every night. commuter tour. this Land of the Free that we live in... its 3.79 million square miles, the third largest country in the world. England? 50, 346 square miles. a dinky country. how does that fare for a band in a van rambling from one good-music-scene town to another in the USA? long. today they're driving for 8 hours then doing a sound check if they make it in time. out of Denver last night they drove for a few hours then got up early today to drive some more.

logic time:

the whole day in the van. then load-in/ sound check. if they're headlining there'll be a good few hours there where there's nothing but dead time. dinner/ watching the openers/ hanging out. this is a good time for him to call. but if josh is in the club, he's in the dressing room with people, which sucks. but the further away he gets from backstage, the closer he is to the noise of another band. if he goes out of the club, there are the fans. where there are fans, there are Punishers. and where there are Punishers, I hang up the phone. (more on Punishers later- they are grotesquely fascinating and usually drunk.) this this this this is when Josh usually camps in the van. this this this is when the van becomes my BFF... my haven... my quiet place... to finally finally finally have a long connecty lovey chat with my man.

if i'm not busy when he calls that is. maybe i am busy. sometimes, yokos, you should be busy. or maybe you're keeping your phone in a heart- shaped holster on your hip/ always ready, always waiting for that next text/next call/ next little breath of sweetness so your conjoined invisible connective tissue wont asphyxiate. maybe.

i have stopped trusting the phone. i trust the love baby. when josh is on tour, i let him be on tour. i don't try anymore to attach his heart to a breathing tube hooked up to our home and my day and elliot's sweetness and phoebe's scrumbly hair. he knows all about it. he lives here.

you know this is mostly all crap, right? i keep my eyes wide open all the time. the phone is charged and ready to go at a moments notice. truth? i dont call. he can call. but i am on his time. he's my man on tour and i'm just another yoko.

gleek on the fear

all you yokos out there you know what i mean. you fight over the laptop with your kids b/c y'all want to wallow in the depths of netflix instant while daddy's gone. girls. make it stop. it is an evil monster that will suck your life away. it will not fill the aching gaping hole in your soul. try to turn it off. don't let him be the only one who produces anything out there. you exist. you are made in God's image. do something. do anything. you can do it i know you can.

why do i always wait to do what i want to do? why do we always have the cash for a new amp or a motorcycle and not for my stuff that i want? its not that josh says no. he would never say no. its always that i decide its not important, that i have too much to do, that its better spent somewhere else. but why are my things subservient to everyone else's? is it because the moment we become moms we think all of our creative output is lame and pastel-colored so we stop trying? really its because i'm scared to make crappy crap. i spit on that thought. i wont concede. being a mom is heartaching and life-altering. i will act accordingly. i will crank out some of what i've got.

(here's a kooky example: i have wanted a pottery wheel for 10 years. doesn't everyone? my friend even has a kiln. why don't i own one? when do i get what i want? why am i waiting for something to start so i can do what i want to do instead of watching a movie about it? i will go on craig's list and look for pottery wheels. i like the pottery so what?)

creating art has so much to do with confidence. when josh gets an idea for a song, he retreats to the van with his acoustic and works it out. he takes it to the band, they practice it and like 2 seconds later its on their next record. that amazes me- that he doesn't question his output, doesn't question whether people will think the song sucks or not. he just writes it, rehearses it, records it. where is the fear? where is the insecurity? nowhere. well, finally, at long last, its nowhere for me too. goodbye fear. you suck eggs. i kick you in the teeth. i bury you deep in my substrata. i gleek on you. i will sell a guitar and get a pottery wheel. i wont be just another yoko.

18 days.

I could/ would/ should have titled this first entry "On the Road Again." But I'm not on the road. He is. We are here. Home. Waiting 18 days for daddy to come home. Just another Yoko waiting it out while daddy is off living the dream that will not die no matter how many times I stick a fork in it.

Just accept it, ladies, and get on with it. There will always be another tour.

Josh was leaving at 6am. We had to wake the kids to say good-bye. We traipsed outside to wave daddy and the van away and I went back to bed. The end.

Of course, it is Sunday so we go to church. I was totally ready (meaning on-time) and had wrangled a church date- my super- fun friend Lisa (everyone has a friend named Lisa). Sadly, as I pulled up in her driveway her garage door magically lifted and she squints out wearing an old t-shirt and black shiny soccer shorts that I think she had worn the day before on our 25-mile-last-hours-of-freedom-before-he-saddles-me-with-the-kids-for-18-days bike ride.

She looked startled. She squeeks: Wait didn't you get my text?!

Me: No. You aren't going. I have to go to church alone.

She: I no feel good. Woman things. (She speaks it in code cause my kids are in the car... is it wrong that my 10 year old boy still doesn't know what a period is? No! Let him live.)

I squealed away in a blaze of glory. I hate going to church alone. Wah wah wah. I know all you singly singles out there are all whatever but whatever back. I do like going to the movies alone, and eating alone with anything to read, but I like a church friend. Josh is always leading worship somewhere so he counts not, but it's nice when he can sit with me for the message (that's sermon for all you non-church girls out there).

Well, I go it alone, with my two gorgeous and precious kids who for real sit on top of me the whole service and giggle so I'm liking being there with just them.

I skittered out as fast as a cat afterward though. Who wants to answer a bunch of questions about where your husband is and when is he gonna be home and how are the kids and all that. Not me, not the first day. I mean, I'm fine. It's not a tsunami. It's just a little bit of lonely. Which is nice sometimes. I can stop the teardrops.

So the kids are watching a movie and I'm taking them out for a dusky bike ride in about 5 minutes and they will get to sleep with mama for 17 nights until daddy comes home.

What I like most is that this tour, the Smoking Popes opening for Alkaline Trio, is that it is happening during the summer. So I can bop and swim and ride and zoo and laze about without worrying about teaching all the time. (Did I mention I homeschool?) We can hang loose like yesterday's underwear. So we like the summer tour.

Tomorrow: For sure a spin, steam and swim at Lifetime. Doing this almost daily will keep me level for the ride.

Are you dying to know what the One Fun Thing is for tomorrow? It's a swim meet. Em's kids are on swim team so we will meet at the meet and then maybe go eat meat. My kids will cheer for her kids and that's good fun. This is a good opportunity for me to mention that the OFT does NOT have to cost anything. As long as your kids THINK its fun, then you're gold. Also, I should insert that fyi Emily is an Ironman. She will be ever-present on this blog and she will like that a lot.

With Josh gone, I can stay out a little later without worrying about making or meeting up for dinner. But this in itself is a dangerous thing. He's gone. It's too hurty to miss him all the time, so I just stop that and do what I do. Then when he comes home I'm still doing that and I have to start over trying to fit him in where he wasn't before. It's not like he's off at war or anything. He's playing music. So okay bye. Hurts too much to miss him so I kind of try to just forget.

That I'm just another yoko.