Amazing News Everyone!

After some careful consideration, I have decided to re-open my Etsy shop which sells crafts, but most of all, my Rainbow Loom bracelets and headbands!

This comes after a long talk with my mom, and Jeanette about how I don’t mind making the bracelets, but honestly, i am running out of storage for all of them, and while I’d like to keep some I’ve already given some of them away to friends and family to make room for newer designs. But I also have the desire to sell newer items that I have perfected my progress on.

So I hope you guys will help me get the word out! The name of the shop is Rainbow Bridge Custom Accessories! You can click the link above and it will take you to my shop. All of my designs are color and size customizable! Enjoy them, and come back here and let me know what you think!

Transportation Complications

I am back. I have so many things to report, and write about, but today I’m going to talk about the social life for someone with limited mobility.  This has been such a hot button topic in my family over the years that I figured that some others may or may not be dealing with the same or similar issues.

First let me start by saying that here limited mobility means limited means of getting out and about, not necessarily physically. My type of Cerebral Palsy, I got lucky that I can walk fairly well, and even long distances with the walker.  But I still can’t drive, or otherwise  get myself places without asking for someone to take me somewhere.

This has limited where I can go to socialize and meet people my age with my interests. Oh I have friends, but even they are getting tired of driving me, even with offers of gas money and other things.  So I’ve been brainstorming.

Hope isn’t lost for me, I realized. I just have to finance myself a bit better than I have in the past, and when I do, I will be able to go out and do things.  Services like Uber have made getting out much more convenient for me, and at no time was that clearer than yesterday when I really needed to get out.

I was able to take myself to the movies and saw two great ones. Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2 and Beauty and the Beast. (More on those later!) And I didn’t have to ask to be taken. I just got my stuff together and went. It was a freedom I quite enjoyed, and will be doing again in the future. The price for that freedom? 12.00 even. Of course it would’ve been 24.00 if Mom hadn’t offered to pick me up after my second movie. (But that’s different. I didn’t ask to be picked up. I would’ve paid the fare to get back.)

I want my freedom so badly, guys. But it always has a price tag, and sometimes I can’t afford it. Not when I have an impulse spending problem when my anxiety/depression kicks up. (more on that, too, I promise). But I have decided that I needed to choose what was important, and go back to what I was doing before. Choosing the two most important releases whether they be Blurays or books, and then putting money in a  sort of savings account with Mom and using that to fund my outings. I will be talking to Mom about that more when she wakes up, and on the way to the library today.

Anyway, these are just some thoughts I’ve had over the last few days. I promise there will be talk of California, the movies I mentioned, and other things as the days go on. I’m just slowly trying to get back into the swing of things. 🙂

Thanks as always for being here….. it makes writing so much easier when I know people are interested.

Heather

A Little Hiatus is Coming

Hello friends. I haven’t written for a while for a great number of reasons, but the biggest reason has to do with Camp NaNoWriMo. I spent this whole month working on a brand new novel that I will be taking about more at length as I go through finishing and re-organizing it and then editing it for it’s first Alpha read through.

April also marked my read-a-thon where I try to read as many books as I can. Now that Camp NaNoWriMo is over that’s what I’ll be focusing on. So far I have finished 1 book in April, and it was a novella. Now I am making an extra push to finish The Circle by Dave Eggers since I will be seeing that movie when it comes out.

In between those two things I have spent the month and really the last week, preparing for my journey to California! This will be the farthest plane ride I have ever taken, and I’m nervous about it. But the biggest thing is to be prepared. And I am. I have everything I need to make security check with the TSA easy. I won’t wear any socks that day just so I can slide my shoes on and off, I’ll do deep breathing. Hopefully the TSA agents will be pleasant.

I have big plans for California  and it looks like most of them will come to fruition if not all of them. Disneyland is out, but I will be going to Universal Studios. We’ll see some of the Stars on the Walk of Fame, I’ll be able to go to Rodeo drive, and see the hotel where Pretty Woman was filmed.  So many awesome things!

I’ll try and write notes in my offline journal so that I can record them here for all of you guys, pictures included. I know I haven’t posted a lot of pictures lately. Sorry about that. I’ve been really bad about doing pictures lately.

That’s all I have for this post. I’ll see you guys in May!!

Is There a “Safe Space” on the Internet?

Today’s entry is about the possibility….or rather, the impossibility of “Safe Spaces” online. I have come to realize that no matter where I write, it’s going to be read by someone. And sometimes those people are going to disagree with your opinion. This is something I struggle to accept. It’s a flaw in my thinking, and I realize that. That doesn’t mean it’s right. I should be able to handle difference of opinion. But sometimes, I feel too strongly to want to listen to others.

So instead, I struggle, and try to find a place where only my opinion counts. Here in this blog, I try my best to be objective. But when I get on to certain subjects, I just can’t be. What I really want to know of those people who disagree with me is if they actually read the blogs they’re arguing against. Granted, I am not saying this happens a lot. Most of the time my opinions and thoughts go unread entirely. But when I get a comment that’s not even on the blog itself, I have to wonder.

So that leads me to this topic of “Safe Spaces” online. I don’t believe there is one. You can friends lock a journal entry on certain sites, but the admins of that site more or less have control of everyone’s journals. So if you’re going to post something outrageous such as anything self-harming yourself, be prepared to face consequences.

If you’re like me, and only want to talk about one particular view of a series or show, then be prepared to either ignore naysayers or defend you position. To be honest, I prefer to avoid conflict. The topics I write about aren’t up for debate. They’re my opinions. So when I get a comment like I did the other day on a certain post, I ignore it for the most part. My opinions are mine. They’re not up for argument. Express your views if you must, but do remember that everyone can see them when you post on a site like Facebook, and it is likely that someone that is not me will argue with you.

I learned something important that day, actually. People are  reading my blog, and they do want to know what I have to say. I wonder  though if the amount of people reading my blog means I have to change how I write. I have already changed my writing style once on here. It is more of an open forum now than it was previously. Topics of all sorts are bound to turn up now.

So while this blog may not be the “safe space” I once thought it was, it is still something I treasure and treat with care because It makes me feel good to get my opinions out there, even if I’m not agreed with most of the time.

How Power Rangers has Shaped my Life

Today I’d like to talk to you about Power Rangers. No, that’s not a joke.  This is a testimony to the lasting positive impression the early years of the show left on me, and why I remain a fan, even in my late 30s.

Before I begin I’d like to say that this hasn’t been the easiest topic to write about, but it’s an important one. These are the years of my life where I discovered writing, and it’s therapeutic properties.

It began towards the end of middle school. That’s when I discovered Power Rangers. I had discovered five teens who were vastly different yet had the same, positive goal which was to keep the world safe from Rita Repulsa. When they weren’t fighting bad  guys, their real lives were full of lessons on how to handle everyday challenges such as cheaters, bullies, and disabled individuals.

In my life, I was being bullied on two sides: At school and at home. In school, I was misunderstood, called retarded, crippled, and a slew of other bad things that I have forgotten for good. At home, my stepfather refused to acknowledge my disability and made me stand in corners, sit in chairs, took reading away from me as forms of punishments that I probably never deserved. It escapes me now what the various reasons for them were.

My one happy place was  Fox Kids at 4:30pm every weekday and 9:00am every Saturday in Angel Grove where I joined forces with the Power Rangers to beat down my own demons. Even if it was only for thirty minutes at a time. It seemed to me that only the Power Rangers understood what I was going through, and they helped me through it.

Let’s fast forward to High School. High School is full of people trying to be what they aren’t. I just wanted to be me, and unfortunately, “me” didn’t fit into the mold everyone w wanted me to fit into. They didn’t understand that I was just pretending when I “played” Power Rangers. They believed I was talking to myself. And I guess in a sense, I was asking for trouble doing that in public, but back then, I didn’t see any difference between doing that and being on stage performing with invisible props. (I was also a theater geek in middle school, so this leap wasn’t far off.)

Eventually, I discovered a new way to channel my imagination. I began to write Power Rangers stories in blank books and notebooks. They were full of all the adventures I had previously “played” out in public. And I never did that again. It was here that I realized that writing was a “safe” outlet. No one could hurt me in my writing. No one could say I was “crazy” in my writing. There was nothing to explain there. It was just words. Of course I didn’t call it Fanfiction back then. We didn’t have the internet. I didn’t start typing my “fanfics” until much later. Actually, my Power Rangers fics have never been typed out. I don’t even have those formative fics anymore. I guess that could be a good thing considering they were probably crappy and full of Mary Sues.

Recently, I saw the 2017 Power Rangers movie, and I have to say that I’ve been mostly  pleased with it. Truthfully, I didn’t want the movie to be made, so I was pleasantly surprised with it’s success. And it’s message. The biggest thing with Power Rangers is that no matter what season you’re watching, the core values and messages remain the same. You’re still learning to be kind to each other. You’re still learning how to work together through conflict. You’re still shown that friendship can overcome diversity. The 2017 movie definitely proves this in a big way.

In the movie, the five would be Rangers meet in detention for varying reasons. They all came from vastly different backgrounds.  Jason,Billy, and Kimberly meet in detention. Billy is the first autistic ranger to ever be introduced. I have my reasons why I love this and if you’re friends with me, you can guess why. Trini is the first homosexual ranger to be introduced. Again, this is important for a lot of reasons, but on a personal note it’s important for me because of the friends I keep.  Zack takes care of a his ill mother, Jason deals with being cut from the football team (I think it was football? It might’ve been baseball….), Kimberly deals with her actions after spreading an unflattering picture of a classmate.  These are much deeper reasons for detention than would’ve been allowed in the TV series.

Were there things I didn’t like about the movie? Absolutely. But they are so minor that they’re not worth mentioning. Will I be buying the bluray? Definitely! Why wouldn’t I? This movie definitely worth seeing over and over again, if not for the  Michael Bay effects, the comedic timing with some of the actors is dead on par with some of my old favorites.

And that’s basically it for this entry. I hope you all are doing well. 🙂

Heather

Let’s Sing Camp Songs!

Tomorrow is the beginning of session one of Camp NaNoWriMo! So today I thought I’d talk about one of my favorite childhood camp memories. When I was about thirteen I went to a music camp that was funded through the church I was attending at the time. Oh my gosh, that was so much fun.

There was music of all kinds and it was my first experience away from home like that. The camp was Camp Lutheridge, and the summer was the one before Freshman year. I will never forget how excited I was to go. Then how scared I was when I realized that my brother and I were not only in separate cabins (because heck, we’d been sleeping in bedrooms next to each other for years, so why separate us now), but separate groups because of our age difference!

I think I did a lot of growing that year. I learned not to depend so much on my brother, or my mom. I learned more how to depend on myself, and trust others. That took some doing considering all of the bullying I’d dealt with because of my disability. For the first time, I had real friends and “family” that didn’t judge me or think I’m crazy.

When it came time to leave (the session was only a week long, sadly) I was  very upset. I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to stay. But I did come away with new songs to sing, and friends to write. And for a while, we all wrote each other back and forth.

Over the years, we stopped writing, and honestly, I’ve forgotten the names of most of my camp friends. I will never forget Mara or Matthew though. They were two counselors that made my time more fun and helped me to overcome my fears and undertake challenges I may not have, otherwise.

Real-life camp was an experience I will never forget, and that is why,  when I can, I try to appreciate Camp NaNoWriMo. There are no songs that we sing, but words flow, and camaraderie runs deep. We, the writers who do Camp NaNoWriMo, build on each other’s energy and ideas and words.  And that , on it own, is as close to a real camp experience as you can really get.

Heather

Bullying Part 2….and a wee bit of fangirling

So I decided I wasn’t going to let these women tell me how to live my life (or in this case, how to dress). The things they were worried about are all cleared up now, and I won’t be seeing them anymore as of tomorrow so it’s a moot point, really.

Rumikub will probably resume for me as of next week. We’ll see how I feel about that. If not, I can still use the club house after Wednesday to do my April writing. I am not expecting to run into anyone from there after that. Am I avoiding the situation, yes. But this is what works best for me.

A friend of mine had the best idea in the world, I might act on it. She wants me to write a letter to these ladies using Victoria’s voice. You will remember that Victoria is my alter ego. The other me that doesn’t hold back when it comes to defending people. Well, she “defends” me by making me think in terms I never would ordinarily.

So writing a letter to these ladies in her voice would allow me to get the anger and hurt out without causing more problems in the future. I might do this exercise when I come back from coloring club  today. Or I might hold off. I’ve found I’m not as angry as I was. Today’s going to be a good day, and I don’t want to spoil it by thinking about something that happened over the weekend.

So what’s s good about today? Today is the day I’ve been waiting for since November 2016! Today, the bluray of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them will be delivered to my mailbox!  I haven’t written in here extensively about my fandoms because even though I have changed directions, this is still a blog, but I can’t escape this one, so…

I am big Harry Potter fan. I’m not as big as some, and I’ve only seen two Harry Potter movies multiple times (not on purpose. It’s just that I get easily distracted!), but I love the books, love the movies. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, JK Rowling’s latest extension of the wizarding world is going to be one of those that I will inevitably watch over and over because it’s an amazingly done film. I’ve already seen it twice. Once in theaters than on my digital copy from Google Play. So being able to watch it on Bluray and have the behind the scenes bonus features is going to be great.

This movie actually made an Eddie Redmayne fan out of me, so I’ve made it my mission to see as many of his movies as I can, starting with the first one where I ever heard his name, The  Theory of Everything, the Stephen Hawking movie.  I know he’s been in more than two movies so it will take some research to find them all if they are all available in the States since he’s a British actor, a fact that my friend Terri let loose last night. (I’m not mad, I’m elated. Another new British actor to fawn over? Yes please!)

So I have that to look forward to today after coloring club, and maybe it will be just what I need to pick my mood up even more. While I am doing better everything I’ve been told since the weekend has been eating at me. I refuse to entertain those thoughts and words any longer. Victoria wouldn’t let it get to her with all the friends she has, and I am going to be among friends here in an hour and a half. It’s time to woman-up, and be strong.

 

Drowsy Day

Today is going to be one of those days where I am drowsy and out of it most of the day. I slept very little last night due things I don’t wish to discuss. I finally took a melatonin pill around 2am to force myself to sleep.

I got woken up about four hours later by the cat who demanded her soft food. Fed her and went right back to bed until about 8. That was fine. I didn’t intend to sleep all day today, anyway.

I’m trying to get a hold of Jeanette to see if she wants to try and hang out today. Either at her place or mine. I’m not too picky at this point. Personally? I’d rather go over there. There’s nothing for me here.

Correction. Just heard from her and it looks like I’m going to doing things solo today. Not going to explain because it’s not my place. But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little bit upset about it. But I should see Jeanette on Tuesday if everything goes alright. We’ll find out, and I’ll keep you guys posted.

So my focus today should be finishing my glittery dragon scale “chain mail” headband, trying to get the border of my Thomas Kincade Disney puzzle done, and just relaxing since today is going to be mostly a down day. We’ll see what happens.

Going to get off here, finish the dishes and work on some of that now.  Talk to you guys soon.

Heather

My Alter Ego

I just got done watching an old favorite Disney movie of mine called Read it and Weep. It is about a girl who keeps a journal is the style of a fictional world with an alter ego named Isabella, Is for short.  Her journal accidentally gets printed out an turned in as an  essay and ends up winning a school wide contest. The result is that the rest of the journal becomes an instant best selling book.

Jamie (the main character), then, in turn loses herself, and takes on the traits of her alter ego which was named Isabella (“Is for short”). Is is everything Jamie thought she wanted to be.  Through the course of the movie, she learns that being herself is all that she needs to be. And the people she thought wanted as friends weren’t all they were cracked up to be.

Why am I giving you the synopsis of a Disney movie? Well, the thing is, I think every writer has an alter ego. Some writers might say that they have multiple alter egos. For me, I have just one, and her name is Victoria. Victoria is everything I want to be. And that is never more clear than lately.

Victoria…Tori, she likes to be called, is a classically trained soprano (which I used to be) , she’s good with children (which I am), and she tries really hard to be loyal to those who are good to her (also me).  When she gets hurt by those she thinks of as friends, she tend to take it personally for a day or two before deciding that they probably weren’t really friends to begin with. That’s something I try to strive for, but let me be perfectly honest here: I take a lot of things personally. Especially when it’s me personally they’re hurting.

I wonder how Tori would’ve handled the recent and blatant bullying that I’ve recently encountered. I won’t go into detail, but let’s say that my self-confidence has taken quite the hit. I know this might sound weird, but I need to meditate and see what I come across with her guidance? I just… never thought I’d encounter that  with elderly people. I thought the days of being bullied were behind me.

But yeah. Someday I might have to start a journal similar to the one that Jamie had in Read it and Weep. I don’t know if Victoria would feature, but it would be an interesting experiment to see how I see my family, friends, and enemies, in a fictional setting.

The Stomach Bug and Some Thoughts

I lost an entire day on writing and Rainbow Looming yesterday because I had a pretty bad stomach bug. I don’t know if it was a real thing or if my body went into shock from the bad news I’d gotten the night before. Either way, it was pretty awful, and I felt awful.

When I couldn’t sleep last night I started thinking about how I could better the business. The things I came up with were thus:

• Advertise by wearing. I do this already, but maybe I need to wear more of my newer designs, and less of my older ones.
• Refresh the shop with fresh designs. Put newer designs in the shop. I will work on this this weekend.
• Continuously learn new designs and improve upon others.

These are just some of the thoughts that crossed my mind. I am hoping that doing this will help me expand and get some sales finally. I also bought myself a Nook Book on selling on Etsy in hopes that it will give me some guidance in how to do this. I just need to take some time out to read it and not pussy foot around with it if I truly want to succeed.

Anyway, I’m going to head off here now because I have a  few other things I need to catch up on before I leave for my friend’s house. See you guys next entry.

Dealing with Chronic Pain

Today I am dealing with some aches in pains in various parts of my body. It’s pretty annoying because I have things I want to do. One of those things was working on some new headbands to put on my Etsy shop.

So what I am doing instead? Instead I am working on fan merchandise for YallWest. I am going to be able to go and represent some of my favorite fandoms. One of them is Dorothy Must Die, and I am working on a headband for the Order of the Wicked. I am using green and black to represent that.

Though I am in so much pain it is hard to focus on the headband to begin with. I am hurting in my back, legs, and most immediately, my one tooth that desperately needs a root canal that I can’t afford and insurance won’t cover. It’s throbbing like a heartbeat.

Other than that, I found out that a family member I am somewhat close to had a stroke and is in the hospital in a medically induced coma. It’s not looking good, and I’m not sure even sure I’ll be able to say goodbye.

There’s not much else to say right now, but I’m sure I’ll come up with something for tomorrow.