Life Lately | Traditions Never Fade

The only downside about getting a lot of ideas, getting them written out, and then scheduling them to different days of the week, is that you become very lazy and sometimes getting more ideas after that is difficult to come by. This is what I’ve been dealing with for almost two weeks now. The “Fast Friends” post was one of the posts I did later on in the week, but one of the last ideas I had floating around. Now I’m empty.

I loved doing one of these “Life Lately” posts the last time I was in a rut, so I thought I’d do another to hopeful get myself back on track. You see, I have tons of ideas after Christmas is over. I mean, I got all my New Year’s stuff that I could be working on right now, but I feel like I’m getting too ahead of myself and I’ll really be in a rut on what to do for that whole week of December. I can’t necessarily do any Christmas posts at the moment. Even though, I do know what I’m kind of getting from my mom and dad for Christmas, except for one thing. Yesterday, we went to the mall. It was more like a game of hide-and-seek because we kept losing Blondie. She wasn’t in the mood to stay with mom and I. Poor dad thought the entire place was too crowded for him so he kept to himself for most of the day. I’ve got to say though, I am pretty proud of myself. I told my mom about an idea that my nana and I had finally decided on, well it was my idea but she agreed on it. That was the first thing I did and was probably the cheapest thing(s) I bought throughout the whole day.

My birthday was in early November, I still had birthday money, most of it actually. So I got to spend it on myself and got to clear my conscience a bit too, I thought it was going to be like last year. My nana and I waiting until last minute to do our last DIY project of the year. It’s becoming a bit of a tradition for me to do something homemade and give it to my family members. I promised to myself I’d keep up the tradition, I’m not breaking it now. Since my parents kind of know what is going on, I think I’ll make theirs as my example for the DIY post for you guys. Anyways, there are some clothes that I know I got and can’t have them for 12 days. I did get three shirts that I was really hoping to wear before Christmas since I bought them, but my mom told me a couple of hours later after we got home that she will pay me the money back I spent on them if I wait for them. Considering we’re going shopping again sometime this week, I’ll take the money and shut up!

I swear though, I think everybody and their grandmother (literally! I saw quite a few old women in wheelchairs there!) was there at the mall. We could hardly get through Hot Topic because it was so damn crowded. Going to the mall on a Saturday with 13 days until Christmas is a bad idea. I think the only good thing we did enjoy was the fact we all got to have Chinese food. Who knew Honey Glazed chicken was as good as it was in your dreams. There are some things I’ve never done at the mall, one of those things is go into the restrooms there. I know that’s weird, but restrooms and dressing rooms are a wheelchair users enemy. I got into the bathroom there and we realized they had a wheelchair restroom at the corner. I loved seeing all these kids around, while I was out by the entrance way to HT, there was a little girl in her stroller and her mom walking in front of me and we locked eyes, I have to say “hello” and wave with my foot at them to see their reactions. Her mom said as they were past me that she was waving inside of her blanket. Too adorable!!

Sometime this week, we’re supposed to be going back out shopping. I have a couple more things to get for the project and then I’ll be done. We’ve also got to do our traditional Christmas cookies sometime this week too. Last year, we did them twice. Once at our house and the other at my nana’s. This year I’m using a table so my back doesn’t feel like it’s going to break in two. We also have to put our big Christmas tree in our house. I’m kind of planning on doing a blog post about both of those things, but explaining the meaning for some of our ornaments on our tree that we’ve had for over 23 years! Oh, my little tree has some decorative additions to it. I had my mom put some of my beaded necklaces I got from Plummer and such to wrap around the tree. It’s so cute! Everytime my mom comes home to work she plugs it into the socket to turn on the lights. It makes me happy and kind of festive! I won’t be as festive until I get pricked by the tree branches when we put it together. Now that’s a tradition that started on accident and somehow it happens every year.

Fast Friends

Chance and Casey. RIP ♥

I’ve been thinking a lot what I kind of discussed in the Little Apple Tree post I did two weeks ago. I mentioned inside the post that I have struggled with opening up to new people. I used to extremely shy. It would literally take me a good four or five days to get me to open up in school with both the teachers and students. Being someone in an electric wheelchair and having an aide in the classroom, not only keeping an eye out for you but the rest of the class as well.

There were only a handful of times we I remember different people becoming friends with me pretty quickly. My friend Haley is at the top of my list. She was the first to really accept me for who I am at even a young age. It was in Kindergarten. Our first day I think, my mom recently told me that at the beginning the children were sat down and told about kids can be different from themselves, they could have special abilities. Whether or not, those last two words were sad exactly is unsure. They are what I would say to small little children if I was explaining a physical or mental disability. Anyway, I wasn’t present or who knows I could have been, but I just don’t remember it. I don’t really remember this day as good as I probably should anymore, but we always talk about it so somebody remembers it. Our teachers gave us papers to color or something, I guess I put my feet up on the table and began to color in the drawing. Well, this was the start of everything. The friendship and why can’t stop admiring my ability to use my feet to do things.

The second happened while my family and our close friends at the time were making small rounds to different areas, to help bring awareness to the auction that would hep benefit my family and I from coming and going to Shriner’s hospital when I had my back surgeries. Our church had offered to do the auction, so our neighbor took my mom, nana and I to different places in the county to talk about the auction and what I had wrong with my back and such. We even went to a Christian radio station once. The announcer asked if I had a song request, nobody had explained to me that they didn’t play pop music on this station. So I automatically said “Backstreet Boys” and basically everybody freaked out on me. It could’ve been worse, I could have said Prince. Another thing we got to do was go to different churches. We went to one and the Sunday school kids were either practicing for something, but they say a few songs to us. There was one girl who was very friendly with me. I had her face pressed into my memory. but names were never my thing to remember back then.

Several years, I think it was the middle of my sophomore year. There was this girl who came into our class. That same face was right in front of me, but it had been years since I’ve seen her that it took me a long time, probably three months before everything registered and it was the same girl. I used to get confused with one of my cousins on my dad’s side of the family. They have the same eyes I swear!! Her name was Katessa and that’s probably the reason why I had a hard time remembering her name too, because it was uniquely spelled! When she started to coming to my school, she was still incredibly nice to me and I have tried to keep in contact with her, but unfortunately life rolls on. She’s now a mommy though, so that makes me very happy for her! In that same year, I started biology. I wasn’t looking forward to it, but thankfully it wasn’t only a one semester type of class for me. Literally, from the first day this very tall girl came walking into class. I had never seen or talk to her, but I swear she took one look at me and smiled at me.

Technically, there were two girls in that class that sparked a long-lasting friendship with me. The girl I just talked about sat in the far back of my row. Whenever I had aide issues, she would always help me get my desk and everything out and ready for me, because the damn teacher wasn’t going to do it. I remembered asking her to help me and calling her “Katelyn” before this I hadn’t heard anyone say her name, what was worse our own teacher would muck up her name too!! Her real name is Kaylyn, it is easily confused with that other name. The other girl in our class was Erin. She sat right next to me in the next row. She was just adorable with her quirky personality and gentle heart. She was also a cheerleader in school too. When my sister was cheering in high school, she and Erin became fast friends too. She was so helpful and always brought a smile on my face in that class and other times too. I’m proud to say I’m still good friends with both girls.

To finally end this post, I’ll explain a little bit about the picture above and why I chose to include it. This picture was taken in 2003. When my family and I went to our trip to Florida, our animals were shift to different places. Three of which went to the same place but different rooms. My papaw might be allergic to cats. I say “might” because hardly anybody believes it but my nana. So Oliver had to sat out in our grandparent’s garage. My sister had her first hamster at this time, Sonic was his name. She called basically every night to check up on him. He was placed in the living room, high up enough that Chance and Casey couldn’t get to him. Chance was our dog. She was a pit bull. She was one of the sweetest dogs ever, the completely opposite of what everybody thinks of the breed. Casey was our grandparent’s dog, she was mutt. What was supposed to be a terrier type of dog according to the vet, weighing out under 100 lbs. Turned into a 200 lbs gentle beast. This trip was the first time these two were around each other. They became best friends, as Casey knew how to bark at people and Chance came home afterwards barking at everyone who knocked on the door.

Chance died a few months after we first got ChiChi, she died of a brain tumor in 2008. And we still don’t know what was wrong with Casey, but she was fairly old though when she died in 2012. It was a very day for my grandparent’s because they had had her since was just a puppy. I think my papaw took it the hardest. We all have our moments of mourning. I have at nights were I’ve just started crying because I missed Chance. I miss both of them every day. We all feel bad for my dad though, he’s the one who goes and be there with them when they got put down. I’m sorry about that buzz kill, I just thought you’d like to know the inspiration of the post as a whole.