You know how I suck? No? Apparently every graduate application committee on the entire planet thinks so. Yeah. I can’t believe it’s round two of last spring. Last spring, the rejection was really hard to bear and yet I am subjecting myself to round two. I simply cannot believe it. I’m completely confused. I must be doing something wrong, but I can’t figure out what it is. I can’t even blame my late third recommendation from my out-of-commission advisor, because three of the ‘you suck’ letters came from schools that had four of my recommendations, all in plenty of time.
Perhaps in my personal statement, I should have written about the artistic quality and expression of my oral gratification skills. I still think naked pictures next time.
Official score for those of you keeping track at home: Iowa, Minnesota (Adam! Grrrr!), Indiana, Madison (wtf?), and Michigan all think I suck. Programs who are still contemplating my suckiness are Missouri, NYU (who might be so disgusted that they can’t even bring themselves to type my very name on the ‘sorry that you’re a talentless hack’ letter), Milwaukee, and the two San Francisco schools.
Cockeyed optimist, that’s me.
I’m so looking forward to getting the mail tonight.
Speaking of the mail, did I mention how I found Esteban’s passport? It was on his desk. Where I told him to look in the first place. Regardless, we received our new passports yesterday, which is proof that the American tradition of throwing money at problems is a valid solution for just about anything.
One cool thing: I sort of look like either a groupie or an international spy in my new passport photo. An international spy who smuggles important microfilm in her double chin, but still very mysterious nonetheless. I’m so going to get strip-searched in Heathrow.
On Tuesday night, I attended Abigail’s very first dance recital. She was so freaking adorable that it made my ovaries start their own rendition of ‘Feed Me Seymour’. My organs are big fans of Broadway shows.
I went very early to score some seats in the second row. I ended up having to save the entire row, since Mo indicated that a ton of people were coming. My mom and Mafia Grandma showed up, late as usual. Mom started admiring my new little shiny camera and when I mentioned that I needed a smaller camera with a better zoom and quality for our trip to England in two weeks, she got all grumbly, because she NEVER gets to go ANYWHERE. And here I get to go twice. As though there’s a travel fairy leaving airline tickets under my pillow or something. Gah. Her attitude is getting so very old.
Mafia Grandma never said anything to me. Not even one word. She must be mad at me, but I can’t figure out why. She talked to me at Warren’s funeral, but only after I talked to her first. Whatever. I just don’t have the patience to dance in my family’s particular waltz of dysfunction anymore. And if they don’t want to include me in their reindeer games, all the better.
It probably didn’t help that my mother kept relaying comments from my grandmother and I kept making snide or snarky comments about them. For instance, one of the jazz dance classes had a performance which had something to do with racial unity or peace or something. It was hard to tell because they were 12 years old and the speaker system was very bad and the steps were choreographed by monkeys. For props, they had an easel with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s picture on one side of the stage and on the other, an easel with Robert Kennedy. While I was trying to figure out how Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr figured in with the particular song (because they were both killed in the same year? By assassins? At hotels? Maybe?), my mother, sitting between myself and Mafia Grandma, leaned over and whispered, ‘Grandma wants to know who is in that picture on the right side?’
‘Bobby Kennedy’ I whispered back.
‘Oh. Ok. She thought it was maybe Ron Howard.’
While I’ll admit that it was a rather bad picture of Bobby Kennedy. But’
‘OPIE? Dr. Martin Luther King and OPIE?’ I whispered back. ‘How exactly would THAT work? They are dancing to freedom and also the genius that brought us Jim Carrey as the Grinch?’
My mother shrugged and leaned over to whisper to Mafia Grandma that it was, in fact, not Ron Howard and the dance was not, in fact, a celebration of the movie ‘Cocoon’.
I started laughing to myself, then snapped a picture of Bobby Ron Kennedy Howard, just so that I could show Esteban later.
My mother nudged me again. ‘Grandma wants to know if Dr. King is maybe related to Johnnie Cochran.’
I hadn’t thought there would be anything to top Bobby Ron Kennedy Howard, but apparently, it was the ‘If it does not fit, you must have a dream’ connection.
‘Is it because Johnnie Cochran is the only other black man she knows?’ I asked. My mother smiled and nodded.
‘Tell her that Dr. King is Johnnie’s brother.’ I whispered back.
My mother relayed the message. Mafia Grandma made a satisfied grunt and continued to watch the dancers.
Somewhere there is a black civil rights leader doing a triple gainer in his grave.
I beg of you to explain what was in the dance teacher’s head when she instructed her girls to do this dance move?
I don’t even understand it. They did this several times during the routine, which allowed me to wait for it and then take a picture. The song was a really bad version of ‘The Tide Is High’, and at one point, each girl lipsynced the Not!Blondie lyrics into a hairbrush. Or didn’t lip sync them, just holding a hairbrush up to their mouths and staring blankly out into the audience. Probably mortified that they had just wiggled their vulva’s at several hundred people.
It was truly a night of mysteries.
I got to try out my new camera in low light settings, and as you can see from this photo of Abby (which has not been given a color wash in Photoshop’ that’s how it turned out), I haven’t quite figured out the finer points yet. There are fewer options than my Canon EOS, so it makes it harder to figure out the combinations I need to get the results I want. Also, the little window on the camera makes things look a lot lighter than they are once I download them off the camera, so that’s sort of messing with my ability to regulate.
In normal light, it seems to be working very nicely. Here are some of the spring melt fog and hoare frost (no, really, I’m not making that up! That’s what it’s called. It’s one of the few things I remember from my college meteorology class.) we had last week.
Have a lovely week.
