we each get our OWN tent...

The anticipation of Bonnaroo is building. Last night I had to talk myself down from the complete excitement frenzy I’m reaching: “You have to sleep now because you will not sleep for four nights… oh my God, I can’t wait, my tent is good, should I bring the tarp, where will I put the baked goods, should I bring a pillow, will the airline accept my duffel bag… Kristen, you HAVE to calm down. Go to sleep.” And so on.

I’m very unhappy that I don’t know what I will be able to buy at the general store. Both years I went to Bonnaroo, I brought delicious foodstuff and only had to partake in festival food a couple of times. This time, all my luggage space is taken up by camping gear (including the shelter which after the RV shadow hugging/tailpipe sucking incident of 2002, I have included on my essential-for-happiness-if-not-survival at Bonnaroo list), so Anu is bringing non-perishables, and we are depending on the store for the rest. Of particular concern is the water situation; however, I am quite certain that I won’t shrivel up and dehydrate and that there will be a vendor somewhere willing to sell me mass quantities of bottled water so that I am not forced to partake of the well water from the muddy sinks. Ok, so my memory indicates that the sinks themselves are not muddy, rather that the area around the sinks becomes muddy quite quickly.

I’m finding that my age is also adding a new factor in the whole mix. As in, I don’t want to sleep on a sleeping bag; I’d rather figure out how to bring an air mattress. As in: you are my best friend and all, but I really think it’s best if we have some alone time in the form of separate sleeping quarters. As in, I will not sit on the ground at my camp site, and I will not allow you to either, bring a chair. As in, if weather.com increases the forecast for Manchester, TN on more time, I will go over to Atlanta, find the geeky, pasty white meteorologist and personally do him physical harm. The camelbak is becoming more enticing by the minute. In fact, recent camelbak pricing indicates that this might be an ideal addition to my hydration strategy. Yes, I am developing a hydration strategy for the music festival. Fuck off if you think it’s dorky.

Ok. Onto other things in my life. Or the other thing. I mentioned last time that I was going a therapist in hopes of figuring out a way to stop worrying about everything, and I mentioned that this wasn’t really going well. So, as much as I think they are a sad-single-woman crutch, I bought an intriguing self-help book called The Worry Cure. This is so horrible and cliché, but I’m going to say it anyway: this book is changing my life. It’s helping me in ways that no one has ever been able to. It’s straight cognitive behavioral therapy. It’s wonderful. So if any of you are worriers and you are getting tired of it (or are concerned that all that worry will make your hair fall out and cause an early death), go check the book out.

So many people have tried to help me with my worries by either 1) telling me to stop or 2) reassuring me. The first goes like this: Kristen, you shouldn’t waste your time worrying that you are going to lose your job, there’s nothing you can do about it. My response is sure there are things I can do about it and one of them is worry all the fucking time. The second is like this: Kristen, they won’t fire you from your job because you are important to the team, smart, capable and hardworking. They need you! My response is yeah but what if they realize that I am not any of those things and then they tell me that I’m a horrible, lazy, stupid and slovenly person right before they throw me out on my ass and take away my two monitors. So this book is helping me realize that neither of those ways is really the way to deal with the whole situation.