<p>I was also laughing trying to remember whose young artists were in NY, wondering if I was watching some of your children as they began their budding careers!</p>
<p>smarty, that’s my train and you don tell me you are coming?
then again, I might be reading subway ads aloud "start here Go anywhere Borough of Manhattan Community College " “EZ pawn! I payed my bill and got my bracelet back” “clear smooth skin and you will say, Thank you Dr. Z”
or eating third Tim Horton donuts or fifth consecutive bananas, or wearing monster costume, better not know me…</p>
<p>You know what Bears, I did think of you and thought Bears is going to scold me for not letting her know I was coming to NYC! It was a very unscheduled trip to visit in-laws and I was only there for 2 days so apologies. Next time when I know I’m coming down we should meet. Whaddy’a think falaffel or pizza?</p>
<p>is this in laws family of your H who commuted from Flushing to Stuy?
(bears never forget)
If they are still at Flushing now Chinatown, noodles noodles noodles noodles
if they are now Cooper 34th 6 train vicinity, Gramercy Tavern and you are paying</p>
<p>You’re on, it’ll be Gramercy. But listen I think we now have to change your name to Bears, Dogs and Elephants (the memory thing)!</p>
<p>And it would be an honor to pick up the tab. Wait…I’d better check Gramercy’s prices, I’ve never been there contrary to your suspicions that I’m an uptown matron or some such thing. Might have to be a slice at the corner of 3rd and 28th.</p>
<p>Make that downtown matron, I suppose an uptown matron would never set foot below 42nd and Park.
I’m neither BDE.</p>
<p>So funny I was thinking I would check on which insomniacs were up and found the usual suspects. Problem w baby Switters being home is his nightowl tendencies. We watched a movie and then he went out to meet a friend who doesn’t have a car so baby Switters met the kid part way and when I woke up at 4 am I had to go check they made it in? They are in basement making birthday present for friends fabulous gf. Baby Switters put out an email to a bunch of list serves and has been working solid since he got home cutting lawns and odd jobbing.</p>
<p>making what??
1 painting
2 collage
3 figurines
4 heart shaped box
5 something gross</p>
<p>smarty dear!!! tribeca! nolita!! Meat packin’!! I am open wide.</p>
<p>are you there yet loveblue
check this out, school commissioned MFA student works on display across from the Tate Britain
<a href=“http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=47443[/url]”>http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=47443</a>
still pretty bad, I think
wonder how long he predicted would Bill Gates live?</p>
<p>Uhhh, I guess it’s a “concept” but where’s the art part?</p>
<p>smarty!!! have you been up thru? I fell sleep</p>
<p>well look at the beautiful artsy random small bumps on the side of the pyramid. donno, tieline knots, glue bit, plaster gunk? don’t tell what its made out of. better water proof, or get wet and ruined, painted names run messily would might fit better conceptual-ly.</p>
<p>Bears
The birthday present was a pair of really kitchy old fashioned plaques/ coat or towel hangers of little kid boy and girl harlequins that baby Switters and friend personalized to look more like friend and friend’s super fabulous girlfriend. So girl one got hair the right color and boy one got recognizable tattoo on the background. It’s cute because girl is going to design school in Canada next year and her art is kind of crafty in this way.</p>
<p>awwww cute
then my visual turns into the trashy chicklit “The girl with peal earrings”
say, she brings it to Canada, put it in the room as warm reminder of where she’s from and people who love her. she is surrounded by strangers. she is beautiful and talented.
some jealous brat is gonna do something to it…
add mustache or gash them in between couple…
help me, world is not all about drama! drama!!!</p>
<p>artsmarts:
The Love Train thing is students from Cooper but my D is not in it. She is home already.
Bears:
The pyramid is near Tate Britain, we can walk across that place when we go to the London Tower. We should be able to see them!</p>
<p>We are leaving tomorrow. Will share my trip after I got back</p>
<p>I have just gotten back from packing Ds apt up, and catching up on everyones moving home stories. She had figured a day and a half to pack and clean but after I got there and found she didnt have anything packed, and the place a disaster, we had to change her checkout time to 24 hrs later. She had been working on finals up until a couple days before and a commission she was doing for a grad student, so I wasnt that surprised. There was a list where each roommate signed up for an area to clean, and D signed up, but her roommates didnt told the RA she wasnt going to be fined for what they didnt do. So she was told to get them to sign up for their areas. So after she cajoled them, they finally did. One girl got the kitchen (except for oven & stove, D had that), one girl got bathroom, and one girl got to vacuum the hallway (BFD) plus they had to do their own personal spaces. The hallway girl got away with not doing much, looked like dad was hurrying her up and out the door.
Started out doing her laundry (she had no clean clothes) rather than drag home dirty laundry and pack up yucky sheets. Ended up buying a new shower curtain because the other one was nasty and ripped from the one girl drunk and heaving in the tub. D said no one would buy one, so we might as well. Washed 2 walls (one of them 3 times) that D had used with/for some charcoal project. Cant tell you how many bags of garbage I hauled out. But all the maybe useable stuff went to the free shelf. Like dumpster diving, but you can just stand there and make your choices from a set of shelves and a long table, like a Goodwill store. Problem was every time I went there to drop something off, she wanted to come and take more stuff home. But we did get a nice American Tourister rolling duffle that came in handy as well as a George Foreman grill, and some art supplies, and 35 mm film. If the neighborhood residents came to visit (and its open to all), they could get free food, clothing and toiletries too! I ended up having a buy a cheap Wal-Mart large suitcase (plus pay the extra $50 to get it on the plane). Legs broke off the bottom, but it made it home and did the job. Rented a storage space for her and her next year roommates stuff, which we are splitting, $248 for the whole summer. As I packed up her stuff, I realized she had no decent pots and pans left, no dinner plates, no kitchen towels. Two of her roommates cooked with a lot of oil, and the frying pans were so grease covered that at one point the burner caught on fire from the grease coating the outside of the pan. They needed to be thrown out along with the pots that were so scratched on the inside from using the metal utensils, Im surprised everyone didnt have Teflon poisoning. And no one seemed to know where the 6 or 8 kitchen towels went. I knew her roommates had pretty well trashed her dishes (2 of them didnt bring kitchen stuff of their own), so I was not surprised to see stuff missing.
The best part was getting to see the Senior thesis projects, the talent is amazing. The marketing and advertising projects were especially cool. We missed the animation film festival (still cleaning!), so that was a bummer, but did get some gourmet cupcakes during the MFA grad reception! Its amazing the first year is done already still cant believe it!</p>
<p>From there we dragged all 5 large and 5 carry-ons to Missouri to see my nephews graduation. Went to the Nelson-Atkins art museum there and got to see Monets Water Lilies triptych, which is the first time tghey have been brought together in a long time, and by chance they were showing the KCAI animation seniors final projects in the auditorium there. That was really fun, and it was nice to see the family again, although it was somewhat dysfunctional with a know-it-all brother yelling at his wife all the time and a crabby mother insulting people and saying but Im just kidding. Never a dull moment. Little wonder I came back with a cold that I hope is not turning into bronchitis!</p>
<p>Glad to see the launchees all making their ways home for the summer. Sounds like they all have great summer plans. </p>
<p>Today we had our last ever annual CSE review meeting for Aspie girl about her school accommodations for next year. She went with us this time. She didn’t have much to say though. The people that were there all ooo’d and ah’d over her straight A report card… but in the end they agreed to continue with allowing her to use their resource room next year since she is doing reasonably well at the moment with the accommodations that are in place. I’m having issues with her over her refusal to write a college essay - an English assignment for this quarter – so I’m not sure how we’ll get over that hurdle. She had to write a paper on the seventies a few weeks ago and we haven’t quite recovered from all the fall out from that. She still has quite a few missing assignments, plus she missed two more half days last week to do the SAT. Then… then… (jeez, she’s a girl) she has to have her senior portrait taken either Friday or Monday and she’s completely broken out and well… I know I’ll never get her to wear any make up… I’m hoping that she will agree to let the hairdresser give her a few subtle highlights on Thursday… but I can’t count on it. We decided to pass up the free lease on the horse until the end of next year. We don’t think she can handle the extra responsibility.</p>
<p>Manga girl… we spent the weekend together painting her room – and she has BIG plans to install several galaxies on the ceiling and walls next weekend. She’s invited no fewer than six people (plus the Japanese boy she likes) to come and do this super duper glow in the dark spectacular paint job. I just hope to stay out of the way. D1 is looking up photos from space and has some hand in this project as well – though I can’t see her involving herself with all those other kids when they come this weekend. I just hope Manga girl won’t be too upset when all those hands spoil the pudding or whatever the colloquialism is. I find myself cringing just a little bit. But I suppose we can paint over it again if need be. [Stars</a> and Cosmic Ceilings](<a href=“http://www.mural-design.com/ss-stars.htm]Stars”>http://www.mural-design.com/ss-stars.htm) is an example of what they’re planning, I think.</p>
<p>Still not much news with dear D1. She needs to see the psychiatrist for some med changes, i think. But she needs to take care of this herself. We can only prod her so much. She was quite upset when i told her I didn’t think she could go back to MICA in January (I think because of the foundation year she has to start in the Fall) but I asked her to call them and see what exactly her status was and if she can defer until Fall of 2012, which she is totally totally against doing. But the fact of the matter is that she is not ready to go back in September. She has so much anxiety that she just can’t move past the smallest obstacle. But she is painting and she says she dreams a lot of being lost in airports looking for me. Hmm. No progress on job or anything. Social worker and therapist both say to stay the course and remain positive… so that’s what we do. It will be much harder to stay in the background when I’m home again when my job ends at the end of June.</p>
<p>redbug and g-mom, I am having a virtual drink with you both – clearly you both deserve one and I want to join in!</p>
<p>I can say, the chaos gets better. D1 took the initiative in a huge way and schlepped both her cheap couches to West Virginia today while I was at a gardening conference and her Dad was busy sleeping late. Used only female friends at the home end, which is still amazing since one couch is really heavy. Somehow got them up both flights of stairs into new apartment. I am just cheering inside that I didn’t have to help at all! Isn’t that terrible? Maybe those stars you paint on the ceiling just align every once in a while and bathe you in helpfulness!</p>
<p>My house still feels sticky everywhere but at least you don’t fall over a couch as you come in the front door! I had lost my cell phone in the general chaos (the charger was under that pesky couch) and H was really snippy about it. “Well, when you’re on line at the Sprint store for three hours, think about how you need to be more organized and leave things where you can find them, blah, blah, blah” and I’m thinking, “Oh, and also think about when other people who consider themselves superior, move your things about for your supposed benefit, and then you can’t ever find them”? Anyway, I found my cell phone about a minute later and ended up yelling out the window to him the happy news, interspersed with a few curse words. Right now, life is good, so raise your glass with me!</p>
<p>A virtual glass of wine and a toast to all of us getting through this year and retrieval and dealing with having young “adults” back in the mix as well as keeping it sane with the self-righteous husbands (mine gives me those darn lectures about putting things in their place and the word hypocrite never seems to cross his mind)…I am counting on S being the mature one now…I am going on my first trip with H while he is on business! road project in Peru and while he is working I will be exploring Cuzco and ruins and mountains and hot springs…I am thrilled. BUT…leaving launchee and D ALONE for one week. Yikes. OK…let me know if you think this was really dumb. D will need to be schlepped to and from school and he will need to take her and pick her up from friends on weekends (allowed one evening event each weekend, the other night she must spend with brother). He has to stay home every evening except when she is on field trip in middle of the week with school (2 nights). What do you think? Will they totally lie and do other things? I plan to have neighbors drop by (to bring food…ha ha) and the neighbor in front is the superintendent of schools so D would not like to bring our house to his attention. Most of our other neighbors are elderly and nosey. I can count on them to make sure that there is not a lot of noise/cars/people at the house. </p>
<p>Ok…tell me I am nuts…or, any sage advice, welcome</p>