Right now it’s just the little things that are making me happy. Ho hum…
Category Archives: This side of the Hudson
Slightly euphoric
Also posted in Fotografias, On Happiness Comments closed
When in Rome
“There is a privacy about it which no other season gives you…. In spring, summer and fall people sort of have an open season on each other; only in the winter, in the country, can you have longer, quiet stretches when you can savor belonging to yourself.” ~Ruth Stout
My piss poor behavior in the presence of snow would lead one to believe that I’ve spent the majority of my life in Maui. Actually if that were true, the snow would be met with a little awe and wonder instead of pure disdain. The snow falls and my mood plummets to the darkest depths of despair while I think about the scraping and the shoveling and my inability to drive 70 mph without slamming into a guardrail. The first time it snowed I hung up on my mother and had to leave work four hours early so that I would have ample time to try and not die on my way home. All the while muttering, “I hate this fucking place and this shit” for 11 miles. I am such a breath of fresh air some days, I know.
At some point over the past weeks though my begrudging attitude towards the fluffy white stuff has abated to a mild dislike. I actually hummed the other day while shoveling my car out and didn’t complain once when it was 4 degrees even though I was sure that once I returned home, I’d be missing my nipples. Still! All was good. I suppose a brief “Come to Jesus” discussion with myself about how whining is unbecoming on a woman in her mid-20’s helped me to accept my fate. I live in Upstate New York where it will snow for five months straight. No amount of yelling or throwing up the middle finger towards drivers, who find turn signal usage superfluous during a snowstorm, will really change my current situation.
My parents are from the deep-south and if they can deal with snow then I surely can go five months without shrill whining about it. Though I think right now they’re debating whether or not to get my DNA tested for I have taken my whole ‘acceptance’ thing to a whole new level: I am OBSESSED with snowshoeing. It’s like when I spent hours trying to find my new camera I am now spending hours a day reading about how to HIKE in the fucking snow. I am so obsessed with the sport that a frown crept upon my face when I learned that it would be 60 degrees on Tuesday because then the snow would melt. The snow cannot melt it must be here and readily available for me to trek through. In fact I’m currently sitting here getting a little giddy (hence the rambling) about the next big snowstorm. Who cares about snow emergencies and digging my vehicle out of three feet of snow when the trails will be covered?? I told my mother all of this with such enthusiasm that she congratulated me and informed me that it would be a cold day in Hell before she ever went out there with me but is quite happy that I’m no longer blaming her for ubiquitous snowstorms and am instead facing them with joy.
What can I say? ‘When in Rome…’ and all that jazz. My new shoes arrive on Friday and I really couldn’t possibly be more thrilled.
Also posted in Invierno, The object of my obsession 13 Comments
The bane of my existence
“Winter is nature’s way of saying, ‘Up yours.’” ~Robert Byrne
I got absolutely nothing done today. Every time I would open an email or clean off my desk or reach down to grab a pair of sandals that were still under my desk from like July; I would casually look outside and my chest would start heaving at the sight of the snow. There is a very funny thought in the minds of others that because I live and am from Upstate NY then of course I can handle driving in snow. Do I have experience watching others drive in snow? Yes, yes I do. Do I have experience driving myself 10 miles in roughly six inches of snow with fattest, fluffiest, most blindingly white flakes known to man? No, no I do not. Hence the white knuckled driving and need to take deep breaths and the panicked phone calls to my parents apprising them of the seven whole dollars in my bank account that they could totally have in the event of my untimely death.
If you ever want to become religious, drive in snow. You’ll start believing in God real quick when driving through snow as you think of things to ask for forgiveness on in exchange for making it two more miles. Today it was forgiveness for that time I called my middle school librarian a ‘fucking bitch’ and the time I stole a pack of lifesavers from Hannaford.
Also posted in Invierno, Sucks like a vacuum 16 Comments
October
“It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life” ~ P.D. James
As part of my quest to become reacclimated to Upstate NY, I did what any good New Yorker would do; I went apple picking. I also saw a dead turkey and almost hit a horse.
Welcome home.
Also posted in Fotografias 20 Comments
New York, New York
“Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, it is now possible to travel across the country from coast to coast without seeing anything.” ~Charles Kuralt
When I lived outside of New York and a non-New Yorker would ask where I was from, I would reply with a mere ‘New York’ and leave it at that. Of course then the natural assumption is New York City and I found perfectly fine to either correct that person or just smile and shrug and lament on the traffic on the West Side Highway.
If a straight up New Yorker asked me of my origins, there is no way in hell to give a simple answer. They want to know the county or the area code or whether or not you reside somewhere above Rockland County because anything above Rockland County – if say the person asking is from below Rockland County – is considered Upstate. And when responding Upstate it’s good to have a cache of comebacks relating to weather or cow tipping or OMFG where do you catch a cab?!
Sometimes the state doesn’t feel that large and other times I am amazed at the corners of the state that I’ve never stepped foot in. ‘Homogeneous’ would be the last word used to describe the inhabitants. A person from downstate will wax philosophical about how people from ‘upstate’ aren’t real New Yorkers. (Which of course begs the question ‘Why do you talk so proper?’ I talk ‘proper’ because I’m from Upstate New York and this is how everyone talks. But I digress.) And a person from so far upstate that they can see the RCMP three blocks away, can easily find Syracuse to be cosmopolitan, Albany to be ‘too damn big’ and New York will cause all five of their senses to spontaneously combust.
On a trip to Watertown yesterday, I found that there are places that look like a scene out of Deliverance and half expected for someone with a banjo to come busting out of the snow covered trees. That’s how New York is; one end of the state leaves me puzzled because there should probably be a log cabin right about here. Then there’s the other end with Rockefeller Center and the Anthropologie from Heaven. With bars and restaurants that stay open until the wee hours of the morning and the ketel one, pomegranate martinis flow like water.
I live somewhere in the middle. I’m getting used to this gray area of a town where on one corner there is a JCrew and on the next there’s a horse farm. I know I grew up here but I feel like I either missed so much, forgot all of it due to rail gin or blocked it all out to save my sanity. I can’t say that I’m ready to accept my lot in life and living in a place where an exciting night out is the bar at the Crowne Plaza. Maybe one day, I’ll be perfectly OK with it all but after yesterday’s drive to the North Country and the current gray skies and impending doom of an apocalyptic ice storm; that day will not be today.