Chapter 185: You’re The Reason

Let me start by saying Happy Mother’s Day to any mothers who may happen to read this. Mother’s Day is a very special day for children, fathers, etc., to celebrate the mothers in their lives. I have always felt that Mother’s Day is kind of an extra special holiday for many members of the gay community because, according to stereotype and much of my own personal experience, gay men have a tendency to have very special relationships with their mothers. Of course, this is not universally true and I know many gay men who have very complicated and even unhealthy relationships with their mothers. This is not the case for me, and Mother’s Day is an extra special holiday for me. My Mother has been the most supportive, wonderful mother anybody could ever ask for. Aside from that, my Mother is honestly like a best friend to me. We can talk to each other about absolutely anything without discomfort or awkwardness or hesitation. It is really a great relationship that we have and I am extremely grateful for it. Aside from being like best friends, I also have to give my mother a lot of credit for putting up with me over all these years. You see, I willingly acknowledge the fact that I can be an extremely difficult person to be around. Between my diva behavior, impatience and constantly changing ideals about life, creativity and everything else you can think of, I can definitely be pretty hard to keep up with. Plus, I have a tendency to be crude and can often come across as if I think I am better than everyone else. I am frequently guilty of not thinking things through before making life-altering decisions, and am extremely scatter-brained. For anybody, mother or not, to put up with all of this and actually be able to keep up with it all is an incredible feat, as far as I am concerned. Throughout my entire life, there have been very few people who have managed to stick around long-term, and I am extremely grateful for each of them. My Mom, who has had to actually live with me more than anybody else, definitely deserves some celebration for sticking by me through absolutely everything. She is an incredible human being and has been a wonderful mother. I am extremely grateful for everything that she has done for me and continues to do. I owe her absolutely everything. There’s this song that I was listening to earlier today that really made me think about it. The song is called “You’re The Reason,” by Victoria Justice from the Nickelodeon series “Victorious,” and it says, “You’re the only reason that I’m not afraid to fly.” I really do feel that way about my Mom. She has, throughout my entire life, encouraged me in every effort I have chosen to pursue, (which is a LOT,) and has always given me the freedom and encouraged me, my brother and sister to just be exactly who we are. There are a lot of different things that a mother can give to her child but I can’t imagine any gift greater than simply giving them the freedom to figure out and decide on their own exactly the type of person they want to become. For that, and so many other reasons, I am eternally indebted to my Mother. So, yes, Mother’s Day is an extra special holiday for me.

I woke up at 1pm this afternoon. I had kind of assumed this wouldn’t happen today because I woke up so early yesterday. Of course, I did stay up really late last night so I guess I can’t be too surprised. I got up and found my Mom awake and cleaning things around the house, in preparation for our family members visiting in a couple of weeks for my brother’s wedding. Yes, my brother’s wedding is now only about four weeks away. I am still really excited about the whole thing but it is suddenly dawning on me that four weeks is really not that much time and there is kind of a lot that needs to be done between now and then. My main concern is getting my bedroom straightened out, because when my aunt, cousin and grandma come for the wedding they are going to be staying here and a couple of people are going to be staying in my room. So, I need to make it considerably more presentable than it is currently. My bedroom is kind of a hot mess, if I am being honest. It’s perfectly fine for me but if other people are going to be staying in it I definitely have a good deal of work to do on it. I’ve got plenty of time to get it done, though. I am not overly concerned with it. Of course, I am also thinking about how nice it would be to get my bedroom decorated and looking nice. I have come up with a few different ideas for decorating my walls. First of all, after the past week and my newly discovered love, I have decided that I would like a framed portrait of Barbra Streisand on my wall. In fact, I am almost thinking of doing a whole classic Hollywood theme with my bedroom, with framed portraits of various classic stars, like Raquel Welch, who I have always loved, and Audrey Hepburn, maybe some Marilyn Monroe or Jean Harlow or… the possibilities are endless. I really like that idea. No matter what, though, I want to showcase artists that have inspired me in big ways, like Barbra has this past week. I don’t think the classic Hollywood theme will pan out, but I definitely love the idea of framed portraits. I will more than likely wind up going with people who have been more long-term inspirations to me, like Madonna and Liz Phair, (who I already have a framed, autographed poster of.) I would also like some sort of artwork involving Courtney Love. These women have more been the icons in my life than any classic Hollywood stars. I don’t know what I will wind up doing but I am very excited to do something different with decorating. Speaking of Raquel Welch, as well, I watched this YouTube makeup tutorial from a girl with the screen-name pixiwoo, showing how to do a Raquel Welch makeup look that I think I am going to try tomorrow. It is really a gorgeous look and I am really excited to try it. Since seeing the film, “A Single Man,” and exploring Barbra Streisand’s career further, particularly in the 60s, I have become extremely inspired by 60s glamour. A great symbol of that is Raquel Welch and this makeup look that I found is stunning. I am curious to see how it will work on me. I am pretty excited to give it a shot.

When I woke up at 1pm, my Mom asked me if I was hungry, which I was, and if I wanted to go out and grab something quick and cheap for lunch. I agreed and got myself all dressed and ready to go. Today I tried to recreate the look that Katy Perry did in her video for “Waking Up In Vegas,” which is a pretty basic smoky eye look but with LOTS of glitter and sparkle. It came out pretty cute. I have actually been really obsessed with Katy Perry for the past couple days. Once I decided to branch out from my weeklong Streisand fest, one of the first things I listened to was the first single from Katy’s new album, called “California Gurls,” featuring Snoop Dogg. I have decided that this song is going to be the summer anthem this year. It is so fun and fresh sounding. It is very Katy Perry but with much more of a dancy/pop vibe to it than anything she has done before. It is a lot of fun. Anyway, my Mom and I ran to a grocery store to pick up the few ingredients we didn’t have at home for the dinner I had planned to make for Mother’s Day. We also ran to Gyros & Seafood and picked up a couple of burgers for lunch. Once we got back home, she got a call from my brother saying that he wouldn’t be making it to town today. That sucked but I wasn’t overly concerned about it. By this point, around 3pm, she hadn’t heard from my sister at all. She actually got pretty upset by that, too. I was trying really hard to ease her mind about the whole thing because I knew my sister was planning to come over at some point today and was even making my Mom’s favorite food for her, enchiladas. Still, she was pretty upset about the whole thing and I felt really bad for her. She has mentioned to me a few times recently that she feels like her connection with my sister has weakened, and I feel really bad about it. I don’t know what to do about it, though. My sister has a family of her own at this point, and one that keeps her very busy, but I do wish she would make a little more effort to see our Mom more often. I think it would do them both a lot of good. My sister didn’t come over until fairly late in the day, around 6:30pm or so, and brought a big pan of enchiladas for my Mom. She was really happy with it and had a really good visit, so I was happy about that. Of course, I was a little disappointed that my sister had brought food so late in the day when it was pretty much time for me to start dinner. My Mom ate an enchilada but said she still wanted me to make the dinner I had planned, so I threw it all together pretty late and, right around 9:45pm, everything was finished and we were ready to eat. I made baked chicken breasts with Worcestershire sauce, olive oil and garlic. I also made green beans, cooked in Worcestershire and soy sauce, as well as beef bouillon and garlic pepper. We also had homemade mashed potatoes. It all came out really delicious and, since we had bought extra chicken because of the possibility of others coming for dinner, we now have a whole extra package of chicken breasts leftover for dinner another night this week or something. It was actually a lot of fun cooking again. I mean, I cook regularly but this was what I like to call “fancy cooking,” basically because it required recipes. Last year I started cooking fairly often, after never having really done it before in my life, and really started to enjoy it a lot. I really had a thing for throwing “dinner parties” for a while and had a lot of fun with it. Now, I cook pretty often but it is always just simple stuff for my Mom and I for dinner. It was nice to follow an actual recipe and do something new and interesting with food. I think when I started developing all these other creative endeavors a while back I kind of let my joy of cooking fall to the wayside. It was really nice, though.

Another thing I did this evening, while dinner was cooking, was make ringtones for my Mom’s phone. Ever since she got her current phone, the LG Lotus, added to my plan, she has been using factory ringtones and has always said that she wanted music ones added instead. Since I know how to make ringtones, I kept telling her that I would make some for her but we could never figure out how to get them uploaded to her phone. My phone has a USB chord and I can just transfer files between it and the computer, but hers doesn’t operate quite the same. So, this evening we Googled it and figured out that we could use one of those mobile uploading sites to send them to her phone. It was far too simple, really, considering I used to do that for my old phones before I delved into the wonderful world of smartphones. She now has three ringtones on her phone, which was all she requested for now. She wanted the Lady Antebellum song “Need You Now” for her boyfriend, “Speechless” by Lady Gaga for when I call and something from “Glee” for her general ringtone. We were trying to figure out a song from “Glee” that she really loved, and were sitting around listing different songs from the show for a long time before it dawned on us – “Taking Chances.” This is one of my all-time favorite songs, and a favorite of my Mom’s, as well. We have spent many long car drives belting out Lea Michele’s version of this song from the show. So, I made her a ringtone of that song, as well. She said that was a really great Mother’s Day gift. I still feel kind of guilty that I didn’t actually buy her anything but she did say that I made the day really special for her and I am really glad for that. It was a really nice day.

It is now 12:45am and I really should be getting to bed. My Mom and I are talking about trying a new workout routine tomorrow, the “Dancing With The Stars” cardio DVD, so I need to get myself rested. I am pretty excited to give it a try. I am also really excited because my new Palm Pixi should be arriving tomorrow. I checked the tracking on it earlier tonight and found that it had arrived in and departed from Jacksonville, FL around 6pm this evening, so it should definitely make it here by tomorrow. I really can’t wait. I am very excited to experiment with it. One thing about the Palm Pixi that I am particularly excited about is the personalization that can be done with it – my current phone doesn’t allow you to have a wallpaper on your home screen and doesn’t have cool cases that you can buy for it. I really like having my phone personalized to who I am, so I am excited for all these different options this phone has. I have been looking around on Ebay and the Palm and Sprint sites for the different type of hard shell cases you can get for the phone, as well as screen protectors, because I don’t want this one to get all scuffed up on the screen and risk screwing up the touch-screen like I did with my current phone. I am just really excited to get a new phone. I always love getting new cell phones and I think this one will be great for me. I am already thinking of all the different ringtones I would like to add to it and such. It should be a lot of fun once I get it. Luckily, I won’t have to wait too long to get it! It’s just a sleep and a workday away, if all goes as planned. I should go ahead and get the sleep part out of the way now. Goodnight.