House Sitting

I am cat-and guinea pig sitting for my friend over Spring break while she is in Paris.

Basically, I go over there in the evenings, feed the cats, sleep, wake up, feed the cats, make a guinea pig salad, then commute home to go to work.

And then feed MY cats.

This weekend I have felt so laazy.

I'm stressing badly about Juilliard and finances, enough that it is keeping me up at night.

Nala is drinking the water I boiled last night for my tea.

Apparently her own water dish is inferior.

Oreo with a leafy treat. :)

Easter

I did literally nothing except stay home and play Skyrim.

Because I need to detach and zone out.

I have done literally nothing all weekend.

I'm not sleeping well.

But I did, of course, do an Easter basket for Daya, complete with a couple of money eggs.

I'm not sure if she cares or not but I enjoyed doing it for her.

Don’t buy zucchinis on a Wednesday

Wednesdays are Daya’s “early” evenings, meaning she only has dance til 6pm.

She texted me saying she was going to pick up some zucchinis on the way home.

She did this last Wednesday as well, and ended up being caught in some really terrible train messed-up-ness and she got home really late.

She got home even later.

Apparently on the train 4 stops from home- she was in the back car- there was a group of middle school kids and one of them was train surfing on the outside of the train on the back.

They were carrying on and basically being loud assholes.

And then their friend fell off the back of the train and apparently hurt his leg.

Then the kids were freaking out, absolutely SHOCKED that their friend actually got hurt doing something life-or-death dangerous.

Fucking idiots.

The train stopped in the station.

The subway surfer kid walked down the tracks back to the previous stop, apparently.

I think there might have been more than one riding the outside of the train, because Daya was talking to them and being nice and she said she gave them some bandaids.

(Daya always has bandaids for her feet.)

And then…… the kids didn’t want to be around when the cops showed up, so they bolted AND LEFT the 10 year old little brother of the kid who walked backwards ALONE.

10 years old and he didn’t know his address or his parents’ phone number.

I CANOT EVEN, that is an epic parenting failure.

Daya knew my phone number as soon as she knew what numbers were, and actually i remember being pre-k and being made to memorize my childhood phone number. (426-5225, we didn’t have to dial area codes back then)

Daya is very smart so with the help of her phone and google maps she found the boy’s address, and turned the rest over to the police.  I’m really ghlad she was there to help and I just can’t believe his friends just ditched him.

But she still had to get home and the trains were halted… because of the surfers.

She ended up having to walk several blocks to the bus, wait for the bus, and get the bus home.

She said it’s because she got zucchinis on a Wednesday, because major screw-ups happened last week too after zucchinis.

I fully agree with this, and now consider it a bad idea to buy zucchinis on a wednesday on the way home.

Appeal

For some reason I will never understand, the financial aid from Juilliard is only covering the tuition, and even then with the current estimate Daya and I will both ahve to take out loans.

I will never understand how they come up with these numbers and why they don’t factor in the housing.

So I have filed an appeal.

I wrote what I think is a pretty strong letter.

Now we wait… again.

Another church interior painting

Tonight was the LaGuardia choral concert at The Riverside Church.

Oh man it was good.

I brought pastels, a drawing board, and a small booklight and painted while listening to the beautiful singing.

Someone thought I was a student doing homework!

The concert was an hour and a half- that's not a long time to work, especially for this complexity.

My St Pat's cathedral paintings took on average 4 hours... I can't believe I knocked this out in an hour and a half...

For the time I had with it, I'm very pleased.

9x12 pastel on mi tientes.

Scholarship

Juilliard has given Daya a pretty sizable scholarship which will repeat every year.

It is more than half the tuition.

Juilliard gave her more money than USC, a LOT more.

This is without the federal numbers, and I'm hoping those are good.

Daya has applied for 2 additional scholarships.

It will have to work out somehow.

We will know more hopefully next week.

Tulips & Equidistant Cats

Cathy and Mark sent the most glorious tulips as a congratulations.

Isn't that nice??

*********

Financial aid for Juilliard comes out on Friday.

USC gave Daya a small scholarship.

Federal aid numbers arrive next week.

We'll make the Juilliard money work somehow, we can't get this far and be stopped by finances, we'll figure it out.

This whole thing feels like a fairy tale.

So unlikely.

I'm just a nobody with nothing....and this has been such a hard difficult path.

And Daya made it right to the top.

It's just astounding to me.

I'm processing it slowly, because it's too big.

*********

The cats were sleeping equidistant in the sun this morning.

Bad Cinderella

A's mom called me this morning and we had a really good chat.

I was so happy she called me, I just didn't know how or when it would be appropriate to reach out and see how she was doing.

They are ok, A is going to be fine, they just needed a day to let it sink in.

It's not unheard of for people to not get in on their first audition then get in the next year. 

So who knows, maybe we'll see A there with Daya next year.

***********

I went to the office today.

After work, Sharon invited me to go see Bad Cinderella on Broadway.  She got free tickets through work.

Bad Cinderella is the new Andrew Lloyd Weber musical, an it has terrible reviews.

Basically, the cast is great and the show is... well, bad.

I walked from the financial district up to Times Square.

The show was..... well, we can't decide.

We don't hate it, but it was a weird show.

We might have liked it a LOT less if we had paid for it.

(Our seats were really good, too.)

Neither Sharon nor I thought it was funny, but people around us were laughing.

We didn't understand WHY, it just really wasn't funny.

The first act was definitely worse than the second act, and the people next to us left during intermission.  We almost did too but decided to stick it out.

The cast was fantastic but the show just... missed the mark.

We hated pretty much all the characters, they were very unlikable.

The staging however was AMAZING, like super-really-extremely gorgeous.

It was worth staying just for the scenery.

*******

The trains were screwed up on the way home and we helped a German couple get back to their hotel- they were in an airline-sponsored layover and had no idea how to get back to their hotel.

It was a late night but fun.

Bittersweet

Daya's friend A did not get into Juilliard.

Not even waitlisted.

They both got through the whole callback audition together.

I am friends with A's mom and we have been going through USC and Juilliard together.

It's absolutely baffling why A didn't get in.

We don't really understand it.

She's been specifically groomed for Juilliard for the last 4 years.

We were going to be Juilliard moms together and Daya and A were going to be roommates.

She's incredibly deserving.

She knows everyone there.

It's the kind of thing that hits you sideways and hurts.

People go through this stuff together- we share joy in the kids' accomplishments and the sorrow is part of that. It's such a small group of people who make it this far, and we care about each other.

This type of situation will be Daya's whole life... where she'll go where her friends cannot, and vice versa.  She'll be on the other end of it, too.

The kids are very gracious to each other.

They are very supportive- it shows great maturity and grace of character.

I am proud of all of them.

We all wanted them to be together in their acceptances, which they all got, and it feels incomplete without A.

It's such a strange thing, holding opposite feelings simultaneously.

************

I did not realize until this evening that A has not been training outside of school, and I think that's what made the difference.

These kids train insane hours--- Daya is dancing about 35 hours a week, often 7 days a week.

If you take the last 6 months of her training outside of school- say 20 hours a week plus 2 shows, it's a lot of hours.

Estimating- accounting for the day off here and there plus winter break- Daya has been training outside of LaG for abut 450 hours from September through February.

That's a LOT of hours, a lot of experience.

I think that's what made the difference.

You can't just stop right before the finish line.

H knows a lot of people on the USC and Juilliard acceptance list and says many of them are the homeschooled kids from the competition circuit.

They all train crazy hours and don't even go to school so they can train.

Daya pretty much is training in-line with the homeschool kids, and she only has 2 academic classes this year and hardly any homework. And then she's just dancing.

It is INSANE that this is basically the base-level trainings requirement for the top tiers of dance.

I wish I had A's mom with me, I wish Daya had her friend with her.

She knows a lot of the upperclassmen but it isn't the same.

The Juilliard Acceptance

************

I was a wreck all day.

In the afternoon I couldn't stand it anymore, and everything at work was taking me 5 times longer than it should.... so I went to Costco!

5:05pm Daya called me bawling.

She got the phone call from Juilliard telling her she was accepted.

She called me and told me....and then went back to rehearsal.

Daya was in rehearsal after school, and she had her notifications on her fitbit turned on.

She was freaking out because she hadn't heard anything, and she knows the admissions office closes at 5.

So she got the notification and missed the call during rehearsal.

Apparently she also couldn't physically stand anymore.

So she stepped out of the room and called Juilliard back, got through, and they told her she was accepted.

The other kids were all watching her through the window and they heard her say thank you and they started yelling and being all excited.

I heard them when we were on the phone.

Then she went back to rehearsal.

I think it's really nice that she found out at LaGuardia.

After rehearsal he went over to MYB for class... and I went over too, because we had to go out to celebrate.

Ms Debbie gave me a hug and said congrats.

Then we went out for sushi, the same place we went after she got through the callback.

I told the waiter she just got accepted to Julliard, and he brought out hot sake for two and turned a blind eye... I only let her have one shot.

What a day, I can't really process this because it is too huge but I have many thoughts which will have to come out of my head later.

But it is official, Daya has been accepted to Juilliard.

The financial aid info will come out soon, we don't know that part yet but I'm not worried.  

It's going to work out.

NYC Urban Sketchers Portrait Party

Today was the annual NYC Urban Sketchers Portrait party.

It takes place at the High School for Art and Design.

Everyone who signs up is divided into groups of 12.

One person didn't show for our group so we were 11.

Paper is provided- 9x12 watercolor paper.

Then we take turns sketching each other.

We have 10 minutes for each portrait.

At the end we have a drawing of everyone in the group except ourself, and each group arranges all the portraits in a grid.

There were probably about 5 or 6 groups.

Sone of the work was pretty good.

These are my 10.  I worked in graphite for a few, and for most of them just a black Prismacolor pencil.

I gave them away.

Here is the grid and a few pictures of other groups I liked.

Thee is some pretty good high school work on the walls.

I wonder if this school might be better than LaGuardia for visual arts.

A Rainy Walk for Anatomy Books

I really wanted to get out today...the weather is crap for painting, light rain all day...

I love the Morpho Simplified Forms I got last week so much I want more in the series.

(FWIW the full Morpho Anatomy book should be in all artists' libraries... I got mine on a recommendation several years ago. But I didn't know about the little pocket guides!)

Hands and Feet is in stock at 82nd and Broadway at Barnes and Noble.

And another- brand new in the same series- that is in stock down at Union Square.

The plan was to go up to W82nd and walk down Broadway.

These books look interesting.

I found my book, and got another one because I know I will anyhow so why wait...

the cashier asked me if I m an artist, so I said yes because I am.

He said he is too and showed me his stuff... it's digital anime-looking faces.

I showed him my instagram then I left.

He was interested in the books I bought, too bad I got the last Morpho Hands and Feet!

*********

It was not a nice day for a walk but I did it anyhow.

Light rain.

I got wet... the rain was forecast to stop but it did not.

Gloomy Lincoln Center

Gloomy Columbus Circle

Gloomy Times Square

I was listening to an audio book on my walk down, and when I got to 30th street Daya texted me her location, which I thought must be a mistake or I couldn't see it properly.

I called her and as it turns out she was on 33rd and-she forgot-what-street.

She wanted to meet me at Union Square and find some nice produce at the greenmarket.

(Daya actually has a weekend off this weekend which literally never happens. She's usually at dance 7 days a week. Before I went out I told her my plans and said if she wanted to meet me at Union Square she could.  I didn't think she would actually do it!)

We agreed to meet down there.

I got there first and went to Barnes and Noble to get the new Morpho Mammals book that just came out.

And I liked this design:

The greenmarket was closed to due the miserable spitting rain so we went to Trader Joes instead.

Their wine shop closed! That really surprised me.

My three new books:

The Mammals one is really interesting- it is comparative anatomy.

USC Acceptance

Daya has been accepted to the Glorya Kaufman School of Dance at USC.

Yes I'm surprised, I didn't think she would get in and she was mad at me about that.

She's glad she proved me wrong and I'm glad too.
She's not going there but I'm still extremely proud of her.

(And USC is still a pain in my ass...)

Now we just wait on Juilliard............................

*********
I went to the dance show at Juilliard today.

LaGuardia Dance needed parent volunteers to....... walk the kids half a block to Juilliard.
I'm sure it's some dumb DOE checkbox.  But we got to see the show!

It was AWESOME.

Oh man I hope I get to go see Daya on that stage....

The Last Parent Teacher Conferences

It's parent-teacher conference time, and I did 5 tonight- the last I'll ever do.

Manhattan Youth Ballet had their conferences last night.

Everyone says the most wonderful things about Daya.

She has some really special people for teachers... it's such a deep blessing.

Her LaGuardia dance teachers are some of the most amazing people in the world.
I'm going to miss them... they all say I can always visit but it isn't the same if your kid isn't there.

But I did say if they ever want a painter in their dance class... and Ms Foote says yes she does.  Mr Sinacori would be cool with it too, he showed me the print of the painting I did of his class once upon a time-ago before covid.  He keeps it at his desk.

So maybe my streak of painting dance classes doesn't have to end... because I'd LOVE to keep practicing!!

We hear about USC tomorrow.

Even if Daya gets in, she's not going there.

And she won't go to Purchase... I won't force her to go somewhere she'll be unhappy.

The big question is of course Juilliard.

We have one more week of life being a Big Unknown.

I am starting to feel it again and get nervous.

Outperforming

 I went to the office today to work on my Outperform rating.
This is a joke I have with my friend's husband, who also works corporate financial.

We joke that they care more that you go into the office than your actual work.

So today, I'm Outperforming at the office.

It actually was a lovely day and I met a new friend and saw someone I haven't seen since Times Square.

She remembered me... and I could not remember her name....!!!

I asked another colleague on the sly and we had a great conversation about this very thig... not remembering peoples' names.

It is nice to see people in the office... I'm glad I don't have to go in every day but once a week is good.