Will Travel

I am following over 700 different accounts on Twitter, they range from fans of bands, celebrities, and TV shows. If you want the whole story of how I really got into the whole Twitter phase of my life. Blame it on Mike Shinoda from Linkin Park. In the fall of 2008, I had created my first ever account but I was so confused on how to use it that I lost my will to use it, that is until the summer of 2009 were I was following the guys of Linkin Park and their fans like crazy. I got to release some thoughts that I felt were trapped deep inside my head. It was a great idea until I started to have old classmates and family members creeping up on me and seeing my tweets. Is it bad that in the beginning that I actually blocked a few people I knew? In 2010, I deleted my original account and got a new one a week later. Trust me, my break from Facebook was longer. Now I follow different bloggers and several contestants of Dancing With The Stars.

As you may know, I really enjoyed seeing Amy Purdy on DWTS this past year. She was my idol on that show for season 18, as she is a double amputee snowboarder that decided to join the cast two days after she won a bronze medal at the Paralympics in Russia last winter. She was partnered with my mom’s favorite Derek Hough. This week on DWTS Derek was having a bad week finding creative ideas for his and partner for this season, Bethany Mota. The next day, I saw a tweet that I didn’t think would inspire me in any shape or form, but it did. Amy posted a tweet of a link she had him watch on the week he wasn’t getting any ideas of what to do for their routines. The video at the bottom was the link she included in the tweet. It was 11:30am and my mom was just getting up, I had been up for a few hours. I decided to watch the video of author of the book, Eat, Pray, Love Elizabeth Gilbert talk about finding ideas and describing them as “geniuses” and how to turn off those doubts of after you’ve done something amazing.

In the middle of the 19 minute video of Elizabeth’s speech, my mom came in with one of our kittens: Stormy. I didn’t get the chance to pause the video while she was in my room, so it kept playing and she talked and soothed Stormy to stay up on my bed. After she left, I quickly figured out how to rewind it just a tad after I found the place I missed hearing, I continued on and different things she was saying were really revealing to me. Without giving too much away, I’ll just skip to the parts were it really made me think. When I get ideas, I have trouble getting them and having them last for a long period of time. When I was in high school, I used to write songs and I did this for nine or ten years, by the end of it though my ideas would only last for a good ten minutes before they float away. Now I have the problem of getting an idea and the words to write it out from my brain down to my feet to type it out so it’s real. Apparently it’s a slow process going down to my feet and that’s the reason why it takes a few days for ideas to be let out.

If you have 20 minutes to yourself and have a headphones set with you, I think you should watch this and maybe you’ll learn something about yourself. I did…

Road To Thanksgiving

I think this is my first week of Thanksgiving were I am actually paying attention to what is going on around me. I don’t know if it’s because I’m getting older and I’d like to take over the reign of getting things ready for Thanksgiving in our family, but it’s just drastic change from last year and the years before. My only concern is that we have fun and I have my celery and dip. That’s basically all I want honestly! As I get older, I was wonder about if somebody would allow me to make something, but by the time I find something it’s too late to get everything ready to make it. Since I can’t use the stove/oven by myself because of the use of my feet, my courage of cooking or baking anything for my family or friends in the neighborhood just freak me out. I’ve never done it before. Even in our Cooking Ed class or whatever it was called by then, I never got to do anything that the students got to do because I couldn’t reach the countertops. I got left in charge of putting the rags that they used in the washer. Oh boy! In my last year of that class, since I got sick I missed their whole week of cooking/baking and I got left with memorizing different types of cookies and what are in them. I failed that damn test. I knew I was going to fail it, I just did it because I wanted it over. I’m pretty sure I could pass it now though!

My family is celebrating our Thanksgiving on Friday. So I’m making my “road to Thanksgiving” a bit early but it’s okay. We thought everybody in our family had heard of my mom’s schedule enough over the weekend that we’d all knew what days she was off work and when we were going to celebrate it. Well, my poor dad has been a little bit backwards. We’ve had to tell him at least twice now. This is the first time I think we’ve ever had to celebrate a holiday on another day than the actual day. I thought I’d be the one doing this or at least my papaw, but nope it’s my dad instead. My week really started on Saturday when my mom began getting things from the store. I still remember most of the stuff we needed that we had on our trustee list my mom had stuffed in her purse. On Monday and Tuesday, my mom and I had our finale of Dancing With The Stars to watch, you know? She didn’t have to work on Tuesday or Wednesday, so she could stay up and watch it with me. An hour before it all started, she went to McDonald’s to get herself a milkshake. I already had a dessert product from there like two days before, my dad got us a hot fudge sundae to share. I didn’t end up with nothing though, they’re still selling smoothies here, so she got me a strawberry and banana smoothie. I finished it within an hour while Wren laid on my bed next to me.

Well, when I was finished with my smoothie. My mom asked me if I wanted to watch DWTS with her in the living room. I told her yes. So she took me in there and Wren in there, along with my Transformers blanket because I was freezing my toes off! I stayed in there on the smaller couch for three hours. Wren only lasted a good ten minutes on the couch before she got down and went back to my room on my bed. After the first break, mom went in there to bring her back out in the living room. She led her for a bit and then put her back on me and there she stayed for the next hours. I loved how this season ended even though I wasn’t too sure if I’d be so pumped for it like last season. I was worried that even though we didn’t have Amy Purdy on there anymore, I’d lose my interest in the show. I didn’t though, I was very much Team Sadie, Tommy, and Alfonso. My mom on the other hand switched on me. She’s usually on Team Derek, but she went on Team Val this season. You should have seen her on Tuesday when Sadie and Mark got those tens from the judges’ scores  for their fusion dances. She was NOT happy, but I was! I loved it! She was also not happy about Janel and Val getting booted first too. After that, she didn’t care about who won which ruined my outlook of the night. I would have been fine with anyone, but she’s just mad that her favorites didn’t win, but she always tells me if you don’t vote you can get mad at who wins. Karma’s a bitch! And I say that in the nicest way possible!

Wednesday, I went over to my nana’s for the second time. I’m not complaining but I think after the third hour being there the day before, we kind of ran out of things to talk about which ended up being a very good thing because something happened that neither one of us was expecting at all. Our family is notorious for surprising different family members. My uncle Dave is the king of this and his son Chris has been in second for years! One year we were having our Thanksgiving lunch, we all just got done eating and we were having our infamous food fight at the end and I remember “running” from everybody’s whip cream fingers as fast as I could. We all ended up in the kitchen because that year we had so many people that we had to put the kitchen table into the living room. We got into the kitchen, we were shouting and pointing at each other. All of a sudden, we heard this knock which freaked us out because we were all there. Nobody we knew was going to be there was there. So then when my cousin Chris came through that door our entire family kind of exploded with joy, then he got on the food fight by dropping a cupcake on the floor.

Just like that year, my nana and I were in the kitchen, we just got done eating and were trying to figure out what we were going to discuss next. She was facing towards the door and windows, I was facing the opposite direction so when she started to freak out on me, I didn’t know what was going on. She totally scared me until she said “you’re never going to believe who’s here.” I thought it was my sister at first until she went to the door and I turned out and looked out the window. They said they heard somebody scream, I’m pretty that was me. I even scared my papaw that once everybody was inside I went to get him and I think he was surprised too! It was such a fun time to be around Chris, Amber, and the kids again after almost four years. The kids had grown a lot! I showed Lynnie majority of the house, even my nana’s dollhouse. She’s got such a tiny voice. She had her hair up in the Elsa braid. I actually talked to her about Frozen and what teams we were on. She like Elsa the most, I told her I was on Team Olaf. We established that her daddy could be Kristoff especially since we explained he talks to a moose named Sven, then Chris said that he talks to his cars which doesn’t surprise me one bit.

My mom and dad got to see them after they came back from getting a head start at Christmas shopping. Neither one didn’t stay very long, but were glad they came down finally! Of course we can’t have a family visit without taking pictures. I felt bad for my sister, she was stuck at work while they were down here. She definitely wanted to be home then and that night as our older kittens from Bootsie’s first litter, Tubby decided to turn up after a year. Dad had always he got hit by a car because apparently there was a cat like him at the side of the street. He just didn’t tell us because he didn’t want to upset us. Blondie texted my mom after she continued to send pictures to her that he was home to never him go back outside, but after having my mom and ChiChi follow him around throughout the house, he meowed and mom put him back outside. Dad thinks somebody else has been taking care of him as good and calm he was being to us and other cats too.

 Now that it’s actually Thanksgiving, it’s a bit weird. I taped Macy’s Day Parade and I tried to watch a bit of it after I woke up, but I’m starting to understand why I don’t usually watch it. I loved it as a kid because of the giant balloons, but now they’ve got performers that you know they’re all lip-syncing to their music. Especially those broadway sections, but I like those I always have. I know, I know! I’m being weird again. Anyways, the parts I did watch it I only saw at least 3 balloon characters. Really? So I’m thinking now that setting it up to tape was a bad idea. I did this last year too, you’d think I’d remember it! However, one thing that my family and I always say we’re going to do is watch the Thanksgiving episode of Mad About You, called “Giblets For Murray” its were their dog Murray eats their turkey after they just told their family that it was their year hosting Thanksgiving and they were going to do things their way, well then they walk into the kitchen and find the dog going to town on the turkey. They spend the last part of the episode trying to sneak in another turkey into the kitchen without anybody noticing. It’s honestly a great episode, probably the best! I know every word of it because I’ve watched it so many times.

I hope everybody in the US is having a wonderful Thanksgiving. I am thankful for everything I have, my family and friends, this blog and ever-growing amount of music I can consume in a week. This is my road to Thanksgiving, if I can get myself to do anything tomorrow evening I’ll be posting my day with my crazy family that I am so stoked to seeing. I waited up for my sister last night as she came home from work in the snow. Yeah, I’m pretty sure we won’t be getting any snow for Christmas. That’s just my guess since it’s here on Thanksgiving. Dad said we didn’t get much though. I hope you’ve enjoy this post.