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Mom

Film, Hipstercrite Life

Remembering the Past In Order to Truly Appreciate the Present

I wrote this last month while visiting home. It was a difficult one to write. Did a lot of reflecting…

As the plane descended over the familiar lush landscape that is my hometown, several emotions reacquainted themselves with me. Feelings of joy, sadness, fear and optimism alternated dance steps in my brain.

“Where has all the time gone?”
“What will the future hold?”
“What happened to all the people I loved who have passed?”
“How can I keep moving forward?”

These are questions I don’t ask myself anymore. They’re only questions raised when provoked by the sight of my past, which is something that happens irregularly since I moved away from my home and family eight years ago.

In our attempt to live a fulfilling adult life, it’s often easy to get caught up in the minutia and forget what you’re thinking, feeling. To forget where you came from.

This last trip home wouldn’t let me walk past the flowers without perking my senses.

I was picked up by my beautiful and cheerful (more…)

July 9, 2012 by
Hipstercrite Life

Goodbye, New York

My trip is coming to an end tomorrow and I’ll return to regular blogging soon.

In the meantime, here are a few more pics from my trip home.

Some more remembering to stop and smell the roses….

Momma representin’ Marfa in Central New York

My friend Dan is the vineyard manager at Long Point Winery

Dan showing us his vineyard

Lindsay (Dan’s wife) is learning to spin wool 

This dog has four legs; she hates wearing clothing

June 14, 2012 by
Hipstercrite Life, Travel

Remembering to Stop and Smell the Roses

As I get older, trips home vary in emotion. When I travel back to Central New York in the winter, I join the legions of individuals who feel depressed and forlorn. My hometown feels as though it has been forgotten- which it has, in a way. However, during the summer, the area feels alive and thriving and downright gorgeous- which it is. I’ve lived in or traveled through nearly two thirds of this country and there is no place quite like the American Northeast in the summer and fall. Nothing compares to the rolling green hills, the soft grass and the luscious wildflowers.

This trip I have reconnected with old friends and seen extended family. This might not sound like anything particularly special, but considering I come from a small family and am not always best at keeping in touch with people, this has been a very therapeutic and enjoyable experience. I’ve also gotten to lay in the grass while staring at the sky, paint my grandmother’s toe nails, take naps next to my favorite little Jack (more…)

June 13, 2012 by
Hipstercrite Life

Summertime in New York

I have a lot of stuff I want to write, but I’m on vacation, I’m sick and I’m grumpy.

I’m trying to stay away from the comp, but it’s hard.

In lieu of writing, here are some pics from my trip. Hope to get back up and writing this weekend.

Have a nice weekend y’all!

Nothing like New York in June

Grandma visiting Lionel in his new assisted living home. They miss each other.

Lionel holding a picture of his younger self so he can remember his life.

Little Miss Lucy

June 8, 2012 by
Writing

Newt Gingrich’s Attack on Poor Children: A Poor Family’s Perspective

Over the past two weeks I’ve noticed a lot of social media anger and teasing directed towards Rick Perry’s recent “Strong” commercial wherein he gripes about gays being able to serve openly in the military but children not being allowed to pray publicly in school.  Around the same time another Republican made an equally prejudice and cruel comment regarding “really poor children, in really poor neighborhoods [who] have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works”, the “stupidity” of child labor laws, and the idea that poor children should become janitors in their schools. I’m surprised that Newt Gingrich’s speech hasn’t created as strong of an outrage considering how completely insensitive and ridiculous the speech was. When I first heard quotes from his speech on NPR, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Was it a joke? How could somebody be so thoughtless and downright mean?

I took particular offense to Gingrich’s speech because I came from what one could call a (more…)

December 15, 2011 by
Hipstercrite Life, Pop Culture

Halloween Costumes Were Better When Moms Made Them

Halloween is my favorite holiday of the year because growing up my mother made it so damn special. My Mom is a really creative and imaginative woman and in the confines of her small town life, Halloween was the one time of year she could really let loose. Our house was always decorated with DIY spiders, witches, ghosts, paper-mache dead trees, orange twinkle lights wrapped in cobwebs and carved-out jack o’lanterns. The best part of Halloween was my mother’s amazing gift at constructing costumes. Everything was always made from scratch. She went balls to the wall when it came to my Halloween costume. She made sure that I beat every child’s tiny ass when it came to costume contests. Every Halloween I looked forward to what my mother would dream up for me and walk through the halls of my elementary school feeling like one sassy bitch.

Then I turned 13 and was on my way to junior high. Mom told me I was too old to have her make me Halloween costumes and I became depressed. I wasn’t mentally (more…)

October 26, 2011 by
Hipstercrite Life

Your Life in a Box Full of Smushed Candy

Moms are awesome!
Want to know why?
Because they send you an Easter day care package four weeks later with stuff like this in it:

A 2001 Engagement calendar.
Me: “Mom, why did you send me a calendar from ten years ago?”
Mom: “Because it’s a very special year. The year you graduated high school.”
Me: “I know, Ma. But what am I going to do with this?”
Mom: “It’s pretty.”

And this:

The script to the very questionable female rendition of 12 Angry Men we interpreted in high school. The play where I was offered the role of Juror #4 or as I like to call it- The Character With the Second to Least Amount of Lines Because I Can’t Act My Way Out of a Paper Bag.

And this:

A CD booklet to a Stevie Nicks box set I no longer have.
Just the booklet. No CDs.
As I flipped through the pages scratching my head as to why my mother sent me liner notes, I became more and more intrigued by the lyrics and pictures and decided that this was the best thing she put in the box.

And this:

An (more…)

May 27, 2011 by
Hipstercrite Life

Mommas.

Today I was going to post a guide to Postmodern Tourism, but decided instead to talk about my Momma.

My Momma was born in 1950 in a small town in Upstate, New York. She still lives in that town. In fact, she still lives in the house she grew up in. When she was 24, her father passed away and gave her the house. It was the house she brought my Daddy into and the house I grew up in. It’s a modest house, but it was always filled with screaming kids, Will Smith CDs blaring from the stereo, and love.

I grew up an only child with a single mother. My Dad left when I was a little girl. Heartbroken that her family fell apart, my mother did her best to raise me alone. She brought home poverty level earnings from my grandmother’s clothing store on a dying Main Street, but working for the family afforded her time to pick me up from school and attend every band concert, soccer game, and play. If it was difficult for my mother, I did not know because she made sure I didn’t see it. The few times (more…)

May 6, 2011 by
Hipstercrite Life

And You Made it All Ok

“Wow, I was, like, a super-bitch to you as a kid.” I said to my mother on the phone yesterday.

“Nah. Not really. You were a kid. You didn’t know any better.”

“No, I mean, I wouldn’t let you cry. I’d get angry if you cried. You had to be my mom and nothing else. You couldn’t be human. I’d get so angry at you the times you showed any emotion over Dad leaving. I’m sorry, Mom.”

This conversation occurred at the exact moment my father sent me an email out of the blue explaining to me “why he is the way he is.”

This sounds like the beginnings of a “heavy” post, but it’s not. These are interactions I have with my parents on a semi-regular basis due in part to me becoming more objective over my parents divorce as I grow older, me apologizing more and more to my mother for not letting her mourn the divorce, and me occasionally snapping at my father for always being the good-time fun guy I used to idolize. I still look up to my dad, but in different ways than I used to and the matters (more…)

April 8, 2011 by
Writing

My Blah

Grandma: “How is your blah doing?”
Me: “My what?”
Grandma: “You know, that thing you write on? How is it spelled? B-L-A-H?”
Me: “Oh, you mean my blog?”
Grandma: “A what?”
Me: “A blog! Like ‘log’ with a ‘b’.”
Grandma: “A blog?!”
Me: “Yes!”
Grandma: “What the hell is that?”

She had a very excellent point. What the hell is a blog and why is not called blah?

My mother and grandmother’s behavior has been very ‘blah’-worthy as of lately.
Blahworthy being code word for slowly turning into The Beales.
But instead of dramatic New England accents and dozens of cats looking for attention, we have Jewish nagging and my Grandma’s boyfriend, Lionel- a crusty old man in the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s and looking for attention.

It’s all started with my Grandmother’s horrible back pain. Being the stoic Depression-born woman that she is, Grandma was in complete denial about it. She walked buckled over in pain, near the point of throwing up, but refused to take any medicine. Wait- (more…)

February 17, 2011 by