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Jul. 18th, 2010 01:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
altarflameIt's wild how much longer a week is when you're away from home doing something novel and new. At home, weeks fly by, they blur together, they're nothing. "One week til we go to New York" meant we were basically already leaving. Three more days here is endless possibility and a feeling of being settled in.
Summer camp is like this, too - you meet people, you make friends, they become BEST FRIENDS, and then you're crying and exchanging contact info with people you just met 5-7 days prior. I still have several of those sort of peeps added on facebook all these years later, and they're some of my favorites.
Our rhythm seems to be, have breakfast in the apartment, plan out Aaron's dance clothes and shoes for JUMP, plan out what I need in what bag(s), verify all transit directions for the days' activities, out. Walking, subway, walking, JUMP - where he dances for hours on end in intensive classes with over a hundred other kids and somewhat famous teachers, and I drink coffee and beat my head against the laptop trying to focus my creative energy when normally I wouldn't even be awake for several hours. This has resulted in trips down to Time Square, mailing some postcards and conversations with strangers and other Dance Empire parents. Today for the first time I actually also got some writing work accomplished before lunch.
Then it's lunch time and we either go have a heart attack when we realize the diner is charging us $50 for a couple of grilled cheese sandwiches and one soda, or we eat the stuff we've subsequently packed since that is insanity I cannot deal with.
He has more JUMP, I'm more able to think, and then we're off.
He loved the Central Park Zoo.
I loved the Metropolitan Museum of Art's "American Woman" exhibit.
We both love the street performers (particularly break dancers, WOW) in Union Square, the fabulous food that is everywhere you turn, and the live musicians of every imaginable persuasion that you come across on subway platforms, corners, store exits, and wherever else has room to set out a bag for money.
We both get slow and sore by evening from walking and stairs so many hours in a row, and are trudging from the last subway station and sighing up the 3 flights of stairs to the apartment. Where we shower and zone out and read to ourselves and each other and snack on miscellany, and stay up a little too late. There are generally a lot of pictures to upload and a lot of talking to Grant and Co.
I hate how hard it is to have a decent phone conversation. It is not hard for me to engage any of my kids in real, candid discussion IRL but the phone conversations tend to go like this:
Isaac: Um, hi Mom.
Jake from the background: This is Jake Mom! It's not Isaac!!
Isaac: It is Isaac.
Me: I know it's you, Isaac. What's up?
Jake from the background: I said it's Isaac but really that was a mistake, it's Jake, I swear!
Isaac: Mom, Jake is trying to tell you it's him and not Isaac, but it's not him, it's me! He's Jake, and I'm Isaac, and it's Isaac talking to you now!
Me: I know, sweetheart, just ignore him -
Isaac: What do you know?
*general cacophany as I hold the phone a few inches from my head wincing*
Elise, lips pressed to the mouthpiece: HI MOM!
Me: Hi, honey.
Elise: HUH?
Me: I said hi. How are you?
Elise: LOVE, MY MOM!! MISS, MY MOM. HOME, MY MOM!! MOM?
Me: Yeah?
Elise: MOM?!
Me: Yeah?
Elise MOM?! LOVE MY MOM! LOVE MY AARON!
Me: We love you, too. Aaron misses you and wants to give you a -
Elise: MOM?!?!
Me: What, Elise?
Elise: MOM?! MY MAMA HOME SEE ME. DADDY HOME SEE ME NOW. DADDY LOVE ME.
Me: We both love you a whole -
Elise: MOM?!
*Elise screeching as Grant tries to reason with her*
Grant: I think I have to go.
o_O
Ananda and I have had GREAT phone conversations, which is really unexpected as she normally refuses to ever talk on the phone at all. It's been great, though.
They seem happy overall. Grant took them swimming and got them Subway for lunch, today. Yesterday they went to Shaun's and made/had tacos for dinner. They're all sleeping together on several mattresses in our tv room and G's uploaded some stellar pics for me.
I have a million pictures, but I'm not editing/posting them until I'm back home.
Tomorrow, I'm having lunch with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
eruv and then later in the evening my RL, normally local friend Kristin arrives to share the apartment for a couple of days :)
Some thoughts:
I was in a 4 story Forever 21 store a couple of days ago. The ceilings are mall-ceiling height, and you enter at street level but then just keep going down escalators. Don't get me wrong, I am thoroughly appreciative of escalators this week, but I felt like I was on a journey to the center of the earth. Where I'm from I can't grow a carrot without hitting solid rock. We need construction machines just to get fence posts in a yard.
Re: Aaron dancing:
He got singled out along with two others as the best three dancers in hip hop class today. There were about 200 kids in there (the class is in a ballroom) and the two teachers were the guy who just got cast as the lead in the remake of Footloose, and one of Michael Jackson's more recent dancers. They told him to come up and demonstrate and show everyone how it's done :D
The big JUMP finale competition performances are going to be on Monday, from 1-9 and there is a live webcast. I'm going to post the links and more exact times for his specific group for anyone who might be interested.
And...to bed. I hate bed even when I get to sleep naked (which I don't do when sharing with Aaron), in a bed that doesn't feel like a rock. *sigh*
Summer camp is like this, too - you meet people, you make friends, they become BEST FRIENDS, and then you're crying and exchanging contact info with people you just met 5-7 days prior. I still have several of those sort of peeps added on facebook all these years later, and they're some of my favorites.
Our rhythm seems to be, have breakfast in the apartment, plan out Aaron's dance clothes and shoes for JUMP, plan out what I need in what bag(s), verify all transit directions for the days' activities, out. Walking, subway, walking, JUMP - where he dances for hours on end in intensive classes with over a hundred other kids and somewhat famous teachers, and I drink coffee and beat my head against the laptop trying to focus my creative energy when normally I wouldn't even be awake for several hours. This has resulted in trips down to Time Square, mailing some postcards and conversations with strangers and other Dance Empire parents. Today for the first time I actually also got some writing work accomplished before lunch.
Then it's lunch time and we either go have a heart attack when we realize the diner is charging us $50 for a couple of grilled cheese sandwiches and one soda, or we eat the stuff we've subsequently packed since that is insanity I cannot deal with.
He has more JUMP, I'm more able to think, and then we're off.
He loved the Central Park Zoo.
I loved the Metropolitan Museum of Art's "American Woman" exhibit.
We both love the street performers (particularly break dancers, WOW) in Union Square, the fabulous food that is everywhere you turn, and the live musicians of every imaginable persuasion that you come across on subway platforms, corners, store exits, and wherever else has room to set out a bag for money.
We both get slow and sore by evening from walking and stairs so many hours in a row, and are trudging from the last subway station and sighing up the 3 flights of stairs to the apartment. Where we shower and zone out and read to ourselves and each other and snack on miscellany, and stay up a little too late. There are generally a lot of pictures to upload and a lot of talking to Grant and Co.
I hate how hard it is to have a decent phone conversation. It is not hard for me to engage any of my kids in real, candid discussion IRL but the phone conversations tend to go like this:
Isaac: Um, hi Mom.
Jake from the background: This is Jake Mom! It's not Isaac!!
Isaac: It is Isaac.
Me: I know it's you, Isaac. What's up?
Jake from the background: I said it's Isaac but really that was a mistake, it's Jake, I swear!
Isaac: Mom, Jake is trying to tell you it's him and not Isaac, but it's not him, it's me! He's Jake, and I'm Isaac, and it's Isaac talking to you now!
Me: I know, sweetheart, just ignore him -
Isaac: What do you know?
*general cacophany as I hold the phone a few inches from my head wincing*
Elise, lips pressed to the mouthpiece: HI MOM!
Me: Hi, honey.
Elise: HUH?
Me: I said hi. How are you?
Elise: LOVE, MY MOM!! MISS, MY MOM. HOME, MY MOM!! MOM?
Me: Yeah?
Elise: MOM?!
Me: Yeah?
Elise MOM?! LOVE MY MOM! LOVE MY AARON!
Me: We love you, too. Aaron misses you and wants to give you a -
Elise: MOM?!?!
Me: What, Elise?
Elise: MOM?! MY MAMA HOME SEE ME. DADDY HOME SEE ME NOW. DADDY LOVE ME.
Me: We both love you a whole -
Elise: MOM?!
*Elise screeching as Grant tries to reason with her*
Grant: I think I have to go.
o_O
Ananda and I have had GREAT phone conversations, which is really unexpected as she normally refuses to ever talk on the phone at all. It's been great, though.
They seem happy overall. Grant took them swimming and got them Subway for lunch, today. Yesterday they went to Shaun's and made/had tacos for dinner. They're all sleeping together on several mattresses in our tv room and G's uploaded some stellar pics for me.
I have a million pictures, but I'm not editing/posting them until I'm back home.
Tomorrow, I'm having lunch with
eruv and then later in the evening my RL, normally local friend Kristin arrives to share the apartment for a couple of days :)Some thoughts:
I was in a 4 story Forever 21 store a couple of days ago. The ceilings are mall-ceiling height, and you enter at street level but then just keep going down escalators. Don't get me wrong, I am thoroughly appreciative of escalators this week, but I felt like I was on a journey to the center of the earth. Where I'm from I can't grow a carrot without hitting solid rock. We need construction machines just to get fence posts in a yard.
Re: Aaron dancing:
He got singled out along with two others as the best three dancers in hip hop class today. There were about 200 kids in there (the class is in a ballroom) and the two teachers were the guy who just got cast as the lead in the remake of Footloose, and one of Michael Jackson's more recent dancers. They told him to come up and demonstrate and show everyone how it's done :D
The big JUMP finale competition performances are going to be on Monday, from 1-9 and there is a live webcast. I'm going to post the links and more exact times for his specific group for anyone who might be interested.
And...to bed. I hate bed even when I get to sleep naked (which I don't do when sharing with Aaron), in a bed that doesn't feel like a rock. *sigh*
