About me:
I was born on a cold winter December day in the Bronx. I can honestly say that I spent my first Christmas in a hospital [insert sympathy here]. I have an older brother, Andrew who is a pain in the neck - but he came first so there is nothing I can do about it. My family moved to New Jersey when I was about three years old. My family would visit New York often since at the time, we still had much of our closest family living there.
Being a typical American, I am naturally a mutt. Even though I have an Irish last name, I have five nationalities and two religious backgrounds, even though I was not brought up with any religious or cultural upbringing. I compare it to the show, The Wonder Years, we were just brought up American, with American food and American holidays and everything American. Our house was not warm and loving, even as an adult, I never liked to stay there that long. I grew up in Hillside, New Jersey just a half a mile from Newark and about 12 miles away from New York City. Early as I can remember, I always wanted to have an unconventional childhood. I was envious of the children that were brought up in musical and artistic families that never stayed in one place too long and always were traveling. Instead, I was born into a cliche.
My parents fell in love with the 70's style of decorating [insert more sympathy here]. As a young girl, I loved to draw. To showcase my talents, I realized that my painted bedroom walls would be the perfect spot for my artistic talents. It only took one of my masterful creations for my parents to realize that writing on the walls was not a good thing - I begged to differ. So my parents fell in love with the 70's icon of style - paneling - the stuff that everyone paints over nowadays because it's so drab and dreary and you feel like you are in a lumber yard. To my parents, it was like a gift from the heavens. So throughout my childhood, my tiny bedroom had been encased in ugly brown paneling, dark brown paisley linoleum ("because linoleum was expensive and it would last a lifetime") an orange painted heater - yes orange, this was the 70's by the way and every last square inch of the trimming was painted brown. I shouldn't complain, who needs pink or purple when your room looks like an office?
A decade later, I hit my teen years. My room looks really small now and all of my friends are tired of their pink, purple or yellow bedrooms and want to change. My parents are thrilled that they don't need to waste money on paint and I fall in love with Duran Duran - revenge at last! Scotch tape and posters are now my new best friends. Parents none too thrilled, but I have style. I was a teenager, I could do no wrong!
To give you an idea of my parents' style, let's walk down memory lane.
- Outside of house = dark brown paint with light brown trim (every time I see a chocolate cake I visualize the house).
- Living room = brown paneling on three of the four walls (real this time, not the fake stuff in my room), fourth wall is wallpapered with a floral pattern and a beige background (somehow, wall-to-wall paneling didn't appeal to them in the living room, but it was fine for our bedrooms), brownish and beigeish furniture and purplish carpeting.
- Dining room = beige wall paper, stained dark-brown trim and furniture is walnut-stained, of course!
- Kitchen = (brace yourself folks!) dark-red brick-pattern linoleum, peachish-beigeish floral paneling (looks like wallpaper - fools everyone), orange Formica counter tops and green tile backsplash behind the kitchen sink, beige fridge, beige stove, beige painted cabinetry, beige painted doors, etc. (If you are sensing that the house had a lot of beige and brown, you are correct!)
- Bathroom #1 = hideous olive-green marble-looking wood paneling (yes - it does exist!), olive green toilet with a black lid, black/green marble Formica that encases the sink.
- Bathroom #2 = blue, blue, blue (semi-decent) - this was done by the previous owners - can't blame parents for this. The previous owners put actual wood paneling to line the bathtub (cheap bastards tried to make it look like actual blue marble - or something), after one shower - the walls started peeling!
- Brother's room = dark green paneling (I wouldn't have believed it if I didn't see it with my own eyes) and brown tile-looking linoleum - you were supposed to be fooled into thinking you were looking at actual tile.
- Parent's bedroom = originally they wallpapered the walls with a beige floral design. They later replaced that with pink painted walls and mustardish-yellowish-brownish linoleum. It's still a color unknown to man.
- Basement = green and yellow plaid wallpaper on some walls, yellow paint on other walls with green tiled floors - "so it looks bright and cheerful". Yes, that's right - we had green and yellow plaid wallpaper!
The Brady Bunch would have been so proud!
As of July, 2006, I am finally pursuing my love of art. I have been accepted into a prestigious art college in New York City. My first love was always art, then photography. With this in mind, I am pursuing Graphic Design. Two years from now, God willing, I will have an Associates Degree. Honestly, I had no idea that the "homework" would take so long. Sometimes I can work for hours on a project just to realize it does not look all that good. When this happens, I have to start from scratch. Once you put ink down on paper, you cannot undo. Sometimes one drawing can take up to seven hours. Unlike regular book homework, you get an idea after a while of how long your assignments will be. But with art, you have to constantly be creative. This semester is finally over (not exactly for me, but that's another story. My classmates and I enjoyed ourselves at the local tavern. You can see the pics at www.lauraquinn.com/schoolpics.html. Due to a scheduling snafoo, I did not get all of the classes for first semester. So here on out, I will be split in two semesters. This should be interesting!
I finally somehow finished two semesters. Technically, a semester and a half but nonetheless, they are complete. Currently, I am enjoying my three weeks of Christmas vacation before I return to school. I will be flying down on Christmas Eve to be with my brother's family just for a few days. Hopefully, the next vacation that I have, I intend to see my uncle and aunt in California and spend a few days with them. Furthermore, I can't thank my cousin Tom's family enough for their graciousness in accepting me into their family. Tom's father, my other uncle, passed away the day after Thanksgiving. He was 81 years old.
Apology for the "Color Theory" picture below. That day, I was one of the few people in class that still had to take the final exam. Unfortunately, due to a family funeral, I did not have the time to study for the exam and was given a week's extension. So after I taped all of my drawings on the wall, I started taking pictures of everyone else's portfolio's (drawings mounted on the walls). Since I only took one of everyone's, I only took one of mine. Sadly, this was a bad mistake since some of mine got cut off and I really should have taken a few at other angles. Also, I did not realize until I went to upload the photos to my website that you can see my fingernail in the picture. Oh well, what can I say! I got very good grades for both portfolio reviews so I guess I really shouldn't be complaining.
In January, 2007, I started a new job, albeit temporary and part-time, but a great job nonetheless. It works perfectly with my school schedule and will end around April. It's project work, which I love and once again, I am on an IT migration project. Since this is my third IT migration project, it's almost like deja vu as to how everything runs.
On a sad note, my cat Shadow passed away two days ago on February 1, 2007. Originally, she was diagnosed with mammory gland tumors, but in the end her health took a turn for the worse. She was getting fluid in her lungs and I thought her coughing was a result of furballs. So me giving her this gooey furball medicine helped her once, but after that it put her in great distress. On the day of her scheduled surgery, they took an x-ray and saw had bad everything was. She had multiple tumors that were making other organs out of balance. She could no longer breathe properly and her stomach muscles were concaving to compensate for her diminished lung capacity. Because I loved her so much, I could not see her suffer anymore and made the decision to have her euthanized. They gave me some alone time with her and I captured a few final pictures and a 10-second video, for keepsake purposes. She was very weak and in a lot of pain and lost a pound from the previous week due to her sickness. When they came back into the room with her, I almost had second thoughts. But she was in so much pain and was not going to live much longer. She deserved to have the final moments of her life in peace. I gently stroked her while talking to her as they administered the liquids. Within seconds she was slowly drifting off into a sleep state and then she was gone. I had to be with her at the end, I couldn't bare the thought of her in a room with strangers and she would not know what exactly was happening to her, it would be too cruel. I had her since August of 1993 when she was only a few days old. An ex-boyfriend of mine at his job site, came across the mother cat when she was pregnant. Several days later, he found the kitten (Shadow) that had strayed from the pack. He never saw the mother cat again after his first encounter and I brought her home sight unseen. She has been with me through several moves and all of the time, always stayed by my side. When I came home from the vet, I put her carrier in the garage as to not upset and confuse my other two cats. They are still waiting for her return.
As
I am writing this, today, April 20, 2008 would have been another
birthday for my grandmother. True to form, I will still never reveal
her age - I loved her too much to do that. Happy Birthday Grandma!!! I have not updated this in a while - since I last wrote, an old high school friend of mine, Ross La Mora, passed away to cancer. What saddens me most about it, not only was he a very kind person, but his parents are very much alive and had to deal with the fact of losing their first born child. On May 24, 2008, his brother, Tony, will fly to California to Angel Mountains. This is where Ross wanted his ashes to be scattered. He will finally be at rest. If you want more detail of what I wrote about him, you can read them on my MySpace blogs at http://www.myspace.com/quinnfamily.
This past year has been a turning point in my life. I finally pursued what I always wanted to pursue, which was art. I attended the Art Institute of NYC and was doing pretty good for a while all along, doing project administrator support (fancy term for advanced level administrative support), while attending school. My part-time job ended in October, 2007. I was able to finish up the semester, but due to the fact I could not find another part-time job that paid sufficiently and/or could work around my school schedule, I made the ultimate decision to leave school, but just temporarily for now. On a fortunate note, I absolutely love my new job and it's like a perfect fit. It's the type of challenging work that I love for people who also love what they do (they are chemists, scientists, etc.). When I left my school, I had 13 classes left to take with a "B" average. It would have been higher if it were not for two classes I could have done better in. One day, I will finish my dreams, just not today.
Sadly, I had to put my cat Smokey to sleep just a few days before I started my new job. Now, Lily is the only pet I have left. The first day that I came home without Smokey, Lily waited at the top of the stairwell expecting him to come up the stairs to bed like he always did. She waited there for 15 minutes. Even at the animal hospital, the nurse told me that she could tell that he had a lot of energy about him. He was in a lot of pain when he died, and according to the doctor, his treatment would have been more painful. Putting him to rest was the kindest option. Last January, I remembered looking at Shadow wondering if she would be the first of my three cats to pass away, just knowing how old she was. Now, April of the following year, I only have one left. I feel some comfort knowing that I kept my promise to my mom that I would take care of her cats after she passed away. Through them, I still kept a part of her with me.
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