Lost In Paradise

It’s been a gloomy week. Our weather has been very bipolar as we get one day were it’s sunny with blue skies, of course the temperature isn’t perfect, but at least the sun is out. Makes things cheerful and everyone is usually optimistic. However, days like today for example is a rainy, cold, and miserable to get out kind of day. As much as I love my sunny days, leave it to these gloomy days were I feel like I could blog all day long. It’s strange how that works out honestly!

Where I’m in a blogging mood, somebody else close to me isn’t very happy about how this week has turned out to be. My nana had a little accident earlier in the week with mixing her tea and keyboard of her laptop together. She called to have somebody look at it and try to fix it, but after having I don’t know how many people tell her that who knows if somebody would look at it and figure out how to get the tea out, she’s getting a new one that won’t be in for a few more days. She’s been going crazy in a nutshell. It’s kind of strange that here i am talking about spilling liquid on a laptop and it’s my own grandmother. Something that you may not know though is that everything about her in the recent years has been controlled by technology and being online. She does these very amazing edits of her favorite: Adam Lambert. As much as we all make fun of her about her obsession with him and anything that’s related to him. She has really devoted herself into her edits and updating her Facebook groups of different subjects. She’s been happy, whereas before she wasn’t because as she continues to age, her body began to fail her.

I’ve been trying to sympathize with her as I don’t know if something like that would happen to my laptop, quite frankly I don’t even want to think about it. The last time we didn’t have internet for a long period of time was back in 2005, practically the whole summer of that year was spent in boredom. That is, until I found a very fun software program and that’s all I did for that summer was play with it because it didn’t require the internet to work. That was several years ago, I am not very good with two days without my internet. I’m starting to understand why my nana likes to compare the two of us because in a way, we are similar. We both can’t go out when we want to and go places. Somebody has to take us and that puts us in a rut because we have to ask, it makes us feel like children. Since we both got our laptops, the internet has taken over all things she used to have time for, like writing letters, reading books, and spending time with real people. Once she got her laptop though, she devoted her time to typing. So gripping things were basically put on the back burner. She can hardly write long letters or sew things anymore because she has lost feelings in the tips of her fingers.

The reason why I’ve chosen to discuss this, because nothing really made sense until I read a fellow blogger Scarphelia’s post about How Not To Completely Lose Your Shit As An Online Creator. The blog post was very much an eye opener for me. I’ve been trying to pull her back from always going to her laptop, hell even she’s tried but nothing’s been able to be effective. She wants to continue to help and create her edits, but she doesn’t know how to control herself when something doesn’t go her way. So if the internet goes off for a few hours she’s left not knowing what to do with herself. Once that settles in, she gets VERY angry with everything and everyone. If I don’t have internet, I’ve been trying to “pamper” myself and enjoy the fact that I’m unplugged from the online world I’ve grown to love. I read a book, color in my coloring book, watch movies, listen to music, and since I’ve saved prompts for stories and future blog posts I could try to create something by using Microsoft Word. I have all these things and my nana only has about a handful of things to do. I’m not trying to make excuses for her nor myself, because I know on several occasions I have had a look of boredom on my face, and my poor dad is the one usually staring right back at it too.

When you’ve dedicated yourself to something that requires the internet, that day everything is shut down and you have nothing to bring you back online. It is a scary thing. For a lot of people, if the internet is down on their computer. They’ve got their phones to update their social media sites. They are allowed to continue to use their stuff. While I was trying to slowly pull my nana away from her online life, something just happened to pull it all out from under her feet all at once. Whether or not keeping her cup so closely to her laptop was the smartest idea is another thing. I’m going to have one hell of a chat with her tomorrow, majority of it will be her complaining she’s had nothing to do or talk to, even though she’s got my papaw who would probably love to talk to her if she doesn’t bring up Adam Lambert. I’m taking Katie’s advice and separating myself and hopefully going to get my nana on the right track too from our online lives. We’ve got something planned to keep the both of us busy while I’m there, we’re going to go through old photo albums together. It’ll be a nice way to unplug ourselves from some place we’ve been spending too much doing.

Little Apple Tree

This is an old picture, it took me a bit to figure out where I am in this picture, but I’m where I always liked to be at when I was small. Fully attached to my mom’s hip. Trust me if I wasn’t as heavy as I am now I’d still be there or sitting on her lap for a hug. When I was a little girl, I didn’t just go to preschool or kindergarten first. Nope. I went to this little local school for other handicapped kids. I have quite a few memories in my mind that play every now and then. I do remember the van rides there and home, plus the heartbreaking graduation day in the park.

Since starting up this post, more and more memories have been flooding my head. Like, while we were on our way to the school we rode in this large van fully equipped for wheelchairs and such, the seats in the van were not like normal seats. We sat face-to-face inside. I think I sat in a normal seat like the rest and my wheelchair was locked in the back. I remember two boys, one of which had to be about five or six years old. He looked like a normal kid but I don’t necessarily remember what he had wrong with him. This other kid that always sat in front of me in the van rides, he was basically my little buddy. Unfortunately I have no memory of what his face looked like or his name, but I feel like it was in the “T” area though. This little boy might be the real reason of why I love kids so much. He must’ve been like three or four years old, he was a lot younger than me and some of the other kids. He had this thing of pulling on my hair. To some people, you’d think this is some form of bullying. I do remember of just letting him do it. He would get a big kick out of it and smile so big every single time. I just loved to see him smile and laugh. He was just too adorable to say no to!

When this picture was taken, it must’ve been a couple of days before our graduation. My first graduation. While most people have a track record of going to school for 12 years and then the 2 or 4 years of college after that, I had 13 years of school. I swear I wasn’t trying to be an overachiever, this was basically like head start on how to get me to do things and socializing with other kids. I was a very shy kid if you didn’t know and up until my sophomore year of high school did that change. I’ve always had problems with opening up to different people, going up to them and asking questions in and out of school was not my thing. It actually runs in my family a bit, my cousin Kristi and Blondie both had the same problems of being shy around people. I remember it would literally take me three or four days in a new school year for me to come out of my shell. Anyways, my nana bought this little apple tree for the school as I guess for thanking them for doing such a good job of taking care of me and the other students. I don’t remember anything about that day at all. Everytime we go out towards that area where the school is located, I always ask my parents if we can go see it. It does not matter how old I am, if we are around I just want to drive past the school and see if it’s still standing and how big it’s gotten over the years.

That’s my little story for the day.