The Birth of a Rock Music School, or THE PAINS OF OLD AGE

We are past our prime, my husband and I. That being fact, consider that in the past 23 years we went from social butterfly workaholics to semi-retired cruisers who went to bed by 10pm. I spent the years of 2001-2009 painting portraits for a living and volunteering as an art teacher to Sudanese refugees, and decorating for fund raisers for my son's school, while raising a perfect teenager along the way.
In 2009, as I had just taken a volunteer position with animal expert Joan Embery, the art market crashed. The phone stopped ringing. Life as we knew it stopped.
I had to get a job.....at age 53!? A REAL job..... ?

Ok...being very resourceful (I'm from NJ) I came up with a plan. I would take one of the unused rooms in the back of our hair salon and I would learn how to do waxing!! YES! Waxing....ripping the hair out of people by the roots! I was excited. I took a course over a weekend and the next week I plugged in my wax warmer, donned my smock and there I sat among all my sterile stuff.....for 6 hours.

This went on for weeks, with the occasional brow wax here and there adding a mere $15 to my wallet. Not easily discouraged, I stuck it out for 3 months until one day a light went on.... A ROCK MUSIC SCHOOL!! Our son had quit his music program a few months earlier because he needed more of a challenge. sThat was a blow to us, because it was his only real social activity. My wish was that he continue to work on his music skills, and socialize. This was PERFECT! I said to Paul, "we can do this! We have the rooms! You're a musician!!" And he was...a guitar player with several bands he'd started in the 1990's, Dead Flowers, Smoking Caterpiller......well, you get the idea. So we interviewed some people and found one who we REALLY liked to head our program-Omar Lopez, who is still with us. Soon we had transformed waxing rooms into music rooms! Omar brought in some of his friends, who brought in some of their friends as we grew. So then we wanted to take over some more space so we wouldn't have to rent a space every time we needed to give our students a performance. We took over the back of the building where there were tenants who were not very good for our community. A few benches, some Moroccan lamps and 3 months of blood, sweat and tears have brought us Electric Ladyland Art and Music Center, an extension of Electric Music Studios.
So now we work 24-7 and my advice? Be careful what you wish for when you're 50 something!