Phooey.

Eric and I have been planning to attend Earthdance for many months now (see Earthdance International and Earthdance Northern California). Earthdance has been one of our favorite annual events of the last few years -- music and camping at the Hog Farm, culminating in a simultaneous worldwide prayer for peace.

We're supposed to be leaving work early today and driving up north... picking up Lisa on the way.... meeting Leah there this evening and setting up a cute little camp. Leah was bringing her canopy, and I had a pretty purple sparkley hanging for it.

Eric was going to make us breakfast burritos in the mornings. Fast and yummy.

I was going to giggle with Lisa and Leah. Probably there'd be a few jokes that Lisa and Leah and I would have thought hilarious, and Eric wouldn't... then he'd look at us like "you guys are crazy" in his cute-Eric-way, and we'd have laughed even more. Then Eric would have smiled his big beautiful light up smile.

I knew I wasn't going to be able to dance. I was prepared to not dance. But I wanted to sit in my comfy camping chair -- we call it the Charlie Chair, on accounta Charlie gave it to me when my back hurt so much at Fair -- and listen to the music, and watch the people, and be with Eric, and be with my friends. I wanted to eat fried stuff and food on sticks.

It gets so cold there at night. I was going to bring all of my warm clothes. In previous years I've brought aaaallll of my warm clothes -- long underwear, gloves, hat, sweatshirts, flannels, fleece, coat, etc -- and I've wound up putting on every single item I'd brought.

I was going to pack my mini-mag-light and my LCD, my glow sticks and glow-in-the-dark tattoos, Roy and Special Sue and Special Ed, my purple fluffy boa, my madlibs, a gallon of cosmopolitans and my oldest, dirtiest, sneakers.

We had to cancel on accounta I can barely walk.

When I was telling a co-worker that we had to cancel, I was trying to do that look-on-the-bright-side thing, and I said, "But, oh well, there's always next year..."

And then my heart skipped a beat as I recognized that next year, which is an illusion for everybody, is an illusion and pipe dream for me. If I don't feel good enough now, I'll likely feel worse a year from now.

Have fun while you can, people. Do what you want to do now. Thank god I did, when I could.