<p>I thought Brad was all greasy looking in Thelma and Louise. Shows you what I know.</p>
<p>G-mom, I bet the ceiling party just had too many kids. 2 or 3 total would have probably worked, anything bigger is bound to get silly and messy. Good for her for fixing it.</p>
<p>What is the “grapevine”? Chain of mountains? Big Ag area?</p>
<p>I was minding my own business at job and my kid calls
“eh, wanna come see our show?”
what show, where?
it turned out his old MoMA outreach teacher who now teaches at Parsons got some grant to use the space for the class and send group mail to kids she knew from outside as well to participate in. and yesterday was the opening.
they performed weird routine to be projected on the white wall, made collages and anthology magazine, some prints.<br>
while they are doing performance demonstration, I was manning at the front desk of the gallery space (is this why I was called?) and boy
people are annoying. they’d come with questions that I can’t answer.
“what is that called?”
“is this free to take?”
and mostly
“where’s the bathroom?”
I can now understand why those Chelsea skinny young’ums sit straight faced looking as if can not be bothered.
there was a nice Mac on the desk but I was not to touch it to go on CC, I tried a bit of pretending that^ even we are in the garment district, 10 or so blocks too far from them fancy places. gotten bored quickly, it really is a boring job. bear making suites me way more.</p>
<p>Want to say hi to all of you !
We get back from Europe yesterday and busy to catch up job in the morning.
The trip is good and in total we have 12 nights there:
London(1); Paris(3); Athens(2); Santoriny (2); Crete(2) and Amsterdam (2). </p>
<p>Originally, D wanted a trip to Europe alone. She planed to use her milage to get the air ticket and stay in Youth Hostels. I didn’t feel comfortable to allow her travel alone and persuade her into this family trip. She appreciate my planning but feel I took over her trip and didn’t encourage her to be independent. Overall we had a lot fun but I am not sure if it is a right thing to stop her travel alone.</p>
<p>What do you think? Should I let her travel alone in the future?</p>
<p>How old is she? If she can pay for at least of half of the expenses, and is over 18, then yes.</p>
<p>My D’s friend just came back from Ireland where she went alone. She has just turned 18, I think. I was very surprised that her mom let her go alone, as she’s more of a helicopter parent than I am! I would have no problem letting D go alone, but maybe staying in a hotel vs youth hostel, altho I hear hostels are very popular in Europe.</p>
<p>It looks like the problem is on me :—(
She is 19 already and just finished her first year college.</p>
<p>loveblue! you are back!!
that’s good she wanted to do hostels. that’s what’s college kids should do. all you need is box of cereal and local milk. It wasn’t first time abroad or anything, you could have let her go on her own (and took me with you for Greek islands cruise instead)</p>
<p>now where is G? are they gone to volcano tour?
what happened to switters?
I know fammom is back but no DC area launchers are around these days.</p>
<p>This is on Washington Post magazine cover. and story is this.
[NPR</a> Media Player](<a href=“http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=136855656&m=136855639]NPR”>http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=136855656&m=136855639)
how inspiring, or what???</p>
<p>I’m still around. Let’s hope for no volcanoes, I need to cool off!! We leave in about 2 weeks and I’m not nearly ready, but that’s no surprise. At least not to me.</p>
<p>I’m here too, I’ll post more in a few days. I am worn out!!!</p>
<p>Recovering from a bout of food poisoning over here…</p>
<p>you haven’t been to Hamburg recently, I hope?
we still need you alive, smarty</p>
<p>No thank goodness. If that were it I might be posting from another location, possibly in the clouds above but knowing my ahem somewhat sinful background more likely from a spot beneath you all.</p>
<p>So…successful return from my peruvian adventure. Kids alive, cat alive, plants parched but alive, house unscathed…Launchee demonstrated that college has matured him and seemed to take care of household perfectly. They lived off of frozen food, mainly, but seemed to be in good spirits and reported that they never even bickered once we parents were out of the house. Funny, I told them, “your father and I never bickered once we were away from you either!” Moral…there comes a time where dividing the family leads to family harmony.</p>
<p>So H worked like a dog with the world bank team…we had an early breakfast together and then off they went to look at roads and landfill and damns…I was left to do whatever I wanted and however I wanted. In 20 years I have never had a vacation to do what I and only I wanted to do. Priceless! In the evening, I would have lovely dinner and evening with H. In many ways, being apart during the day was perfect because my husband is a liability if hiking or outdoors are involved for pleasure…he gets enough of it at work so would choose a spa day with massage over a horseback ride to see ruins…I hiked, rode, wandered throughout cuzco area alone…perfectly happy.</p>
<p>The art/architecture in Cuzco and around was a daily, hourly surprise. The entrance into the cathedral delivers a sucker punch…literally you hear the gasps as people walk in and then the awe becomes a semi religious experience as you see the art and artisanry of mestizo painters and sculptors and metalworkers…so weird…the cuzco and lima indian-american painters were clearly taught by different European masters so some faces look flemish, others italian, then paintings that look like they came from Toledo or Madrid yet weird little Amerindian details like Christ’s last supper consisting of Papaya and Cuy (guinea pig)…or madonnas that have amerindian eyes, etc. Like teh Inca temples, the churches have lots and lots of niche’s that instead of dead Inca mummies have christ on the cross or a madonna. In the cathedral alone there must have been at least 20-25 gory versions of Christ on or recently removed from the cross. </p>
<p>The inca ruins and stones are everywhere and you can’t get over the size and the engineering perfection of the walls without mortar and they still form the basis of many buildings in the city. I had dinner in a cheap pizzeria with an oven built into an inca wall.</p>
<p>Machu Picchu was all that it was promised to be…mystical and beautiful. However it was the unknown and unheralded places that I enjoyed the most. A little church to the south of the city…just a village church…had gorgeous frescos and statuettes and a Morillo painting and more gold and silver work than I can express…It had a king’s ransom in gold sitting on the heads of the blessed family but no security system I could see. The detail work was exquisite but (to someone from a protestant background) almost profane it was so ornate and glittery. It was just so beautiful and then, our little tour group of 5, was treated to a warm up for a wedding with the 17th century organs blasting from above throughout the church.</p>
<p>Food…wow! quinoa and lots of highland tubors and I finally tried alpaca (a disappointment, lamb or goat is far tastier). I didnt eat guinea pig again since we have had it a number of times in Ecuador. The farm raised trout was great and in Lima the seafood was beyond description. Lots of fusion Andean/European stuff that was generally great with the occasional specatacular failure. </p>
<p>I confess that I was starving on one of my day trips and compromised on hygiene to eat street food…I think that is where I picked up Inca revenge and it is not clear which and how many little infections/parasites are now at home inside me. Smarty…I feel your pain…the doctor finds it a challenge and, I think, was disappointed not to be able to link it to the German problem or identify it as cholera at the least. Luckily I had no real symptoms until I arrived back and am coping with the nasty meds now.</p>
<p>so good to be back…please share your vacation experiences too…</p>
<p>dear-est fammom
I have new found respect on you being
<p>fammom - sounds like a great trip! I wouldn’t be so adventurous as to eat alpaca, so I’m glad to hear I’m not missing much. Your children did really well so maybe you can start planning the next getaway. </p>
<p>Hopefully the meds will kick in soon and you can wander the streets of DC looking for exotic, yet safe, foods.</p>
<p>fammom:
Enjoy reading your trip and glad your S and D demonstrated their independent. After got back from Europe, i haven’t post mine yet. Will do soon when i have time.</p>
<p>D still get up at 6:00 in the morning and went to bed about 10 PM everyday. I stopped to cook my way the breakfast and we eat on our own. Today, she asked me to eat together with her, this makes me really happy. I tried very hard to leave her alone in hoping this can help us get along better. </p>
<p>During our travel in Europe, she bought and finished 4 books. Good thing was we found a used book store in Santorini, got two cheaper books there. She bought 5 books from half price store last week, is enjoy reading them now. Other than reading, she is catch up on music, busy on youtube. She loves a lot Japanese bands. I asked her why didn’t try Chinese and she said they don’t have good music. Bears: more to let you know. I think she really loves one Japanese author, read all his books and of course a lot Manga.</p>
<p>She started to feel guilty about doing nothing. I am thinking to push her to do something but worried about annoy her in a wrong way.</p>
<p>FAMMoM - your trip sounds fabulous – though maybe not the aftermath. As it happens, the next investigator meeting (that’s what was taking me on all my trips abroad) is in Lima in August. Sadly, my job will be terminated by then (though it’s kind of funny to watch them scramble to try to come up with somebody to do the training that I was doing at the other meetings). It’s odd that they chose Lima for this meeting since all the South American hospitals/clinics are in Brazil - but whatever. I was holding out an inkling of hope that maybe they’d relent and push back my termination date or offer me a consulting position to come and do that meeting, but it doesn’t look like that will happen. Nevertheless, it sounds like you had the perfect vacation and your kiddos managed just fine on their own.</p>
<p>Love - I wandered all through Europe with a girl friend when I was nineteen – I spent the whole summer doing the backpack/hostel/Eurail pass thing. It was a great experience for me. I did do a couple of ‘not-too-smart’ things that looking back make me shudder… but I had a good head on my shoulders (like to think I still do) and didn’t get into any trouble at all. The worst part of the trip was when my friend got food poisoning in Greece and we had a 23 hour trip back to Germany by boat/train and she was sick the whole way. Now that your daughter has gone with you once, I think she’d be fine to go on her own next time if that’s what she really wanted to do. After I got out of college but before I got married I really enjoyed doing a lot of traveling with my parents. Weird, I know. But it was fun (and just to be straight, I paid my share of the travel expenses).</p>
<p>Your daughter’s interest in Manga caused me to remember that I haven’t written anything lately about Manga-girls ‘love’ interest… Manga boy. I had to take Aspie girl to a horsey event on Sunday and manga girl had plans to go over to manga boy’s house to hang out. I just discovered (last night) that it was in his bed room… GaWK… as Bears would say. She pointed out that that’s where they have their computer/gaming equipment. She played Portal 1 while manga boy made manga posters for his manga club at his school and did his homework. Doesn’t sound too dangerous to me. She said it was weird because she could always ‘hear’ manga boy’s mom and sister walking around but she never saw them. She did say the door was open. Do I believe her? Yes, I think so. It doesn’t seem like much of a romance to me… maybe more of a crush on him by her rather than any interest (other than being friends) on his part – which is fine. I think it’s good to have boys as friends. Hubby and I did that in high school too – though he had the crush on me rather than the other way around. Good thing he waited around as long as he did, lol. </p>
<p>Um, well, yeah. Aspie girl got her USPC ‘D-3’ rating, which means she can go to USPC events for show jumping, eventing, dressage… whatever. I was worried that she would get flustered and stressed out and not be able to do it because of a panic attack, but she was just fine. Perfect really. The horse did everything right. My only quibble was that she managed to get ‘dirty’ when she was grooming the horse because she didn’t wear pj pants and a big t-shirt over her riding clothes (go figure). She even did a great job polishing her boots herself (difficult for her because of her fine motor skills issues). I dread her having to learn how to braid a mane though. But I leave her to figure out the horsey stuff on her own. We have enough issues with me being ‘on her’ over her school work.</p>
<p>As for D1 – no changes. She refused to come along to the student art show (she reluctantly gave me one piece to exhibit – and manga girl had a manga piece in the show as well). She did sign up for a summer drawing course at Westchester Community College. If she can’t manage this course, she certainly can’t manage MICA. But the social worker is working with her on that and I’m supposed to stay in the background. That will be harder to do when my job ends. Maybe duct tape will work.</p>
<p>Tigger bouncing back out now…</p>
<p>Hohohoh!! is this how Tigger goes?</p>
<p>THAT is soooo JAPANESE. left open door, heard but not seen family members.
I could come up with really nasty question about this fine boy’s psych or physic but better not! your HS sweet heart (gawk!!!) of hubby would kill me, if you won’t.</p>
<p>awww horses. national velvet. black beauty. seabiscuit </p>
<p>awww manga!!!
love
who is the artist? I am sure he (the artist) is more like my kid’s age and I have no idea what is what
I think she outa start on the study of the painting we discussed,
“Chinese American Gothic”</p>
<p>now I sit on my paws and wait for travel/ puppy or full blown love/ stories…</p>
<p>Just found this on Netflix and put it on my queue: [Netflix</a> - Unlimited TV Shows & Movies Online](<a href=“http://movies.netflix.com/Movie/Honey-and-Clover/70094639]Netflix”>http://movies.netflix.com/Movie/Honey-and-Clover/70094639)
Thought you all might be interested.</p>
<p>At this moment S1 is home, hanging in the living room with a bunch of his high school friends, including his girlfriend. They made it through their first year with no break up dramas so far. We’ll see what the summer brings now that they have time together.</p>
<p>et tu Netflix?</p>
<p>-Warning! The web-browsing software you are currently using to visit Netflix is not providing you with the best movie-finding experience.</p>
<p>seriously, we need new system. it’s maxed out. dinosaur. miracle. laughing matter
" …you still got… eh, what?" exact words of this very cute free consulting fix-it guy @Apple tekserve on 23rd street</p>
<p>so now I sit on my paws and wait for reports on mystery film and full-blown drama! drama!!!</p>