A-Z Disability Challenge | T : Titanium

I think one of the most popular subjects I tend to talk about, whether it’s online or out in public, is my Scoliosis and time I spent in the hospital to receive my rods in my back to help fix that problem. Honestly, I would like to stop doing it, because I really do speak up about it a lot! So, I’m hoping that this post will mark the end of it for a while.

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I was a newly eleventh year old when I finally had my third and last surgery at Shriner’s Hospital for Children in St. Louis, MO. The surgery actually took place at the Children’s Hospital since it was a major operation. My family and I were already familiar with it, because I had my second surgery there too! I’ve never been too sure about how long I was under but I want to say about eight hours. I’m sure some of my family members will comment below the correct time range if I’m wrong.

I spent about three weeks recovering from the “right side” surgery, which surprised the crap out of my doctor, so they made a schedule to get the final surgery done within a week later. It wasn’t that long of a gap between these two, but neither was the timeline to go home either. I feel like I was there for another week and a half because we came home just before Thanksgiving. For the operation itself, it consisted of stretching out my body, inserting the crushed rib they took out during the previous surgery, placing it into small spaces where the cartilage in the spine is suppose to be, afterwards putting the titanium rods in place; plus the metal pins at my hips. The last thing they did besides sew me back up was unscrew the metal halo I had attached to my skull for almost four months. Yes, we asked if we could keep it, but were told various stories about why that wouldn’t be a good idea. .

Now after 17 years, it is still pretty weird to see these really bright objects pop up on recent X-Rays. Even though I’ve only had one done that wasn’t for a check-up at Shriner’s, was even more surreal because for the whole of my childhood that’s where I went to get a look at the inside of my body, besides the time I got an MRI at Children’s Hospital, just before I was to have the second surgery! Other than that, I really forget that I have them. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I can definitely sense when the weather is changing drastically because of my rods and I’m certainly not a fan of going through a metal scanner and hearing it go off like crazy and it’s not all because of the wheelchair!

As time rolls by, the less sensitive my back has become to being touched. I use to try to move away from my mom’s hands whenever she gives me a shower, because it was so painful internally, but I’m happy to say I love being scrubbed down because it acts like a mini back rub too! Of course, I still have days where I do not like to be touched back there and it’s usually because of something that I’ve done, like slept in a different way or popped it, and yes, I try not to do that on a daily basis!

Here’s an interesting question for you, do you have any titanium plates or rods in your body? Also, do you get sick and tired of talking about how you got it like me?

September Playlist

Howdy!

September is almost over, and then honestly that means only one month until my birthday! I swear after July, my whole concentration is about my birthday, but enough with future plans, let’s discuss what I was hearing and loving throughout this month.

First off, did you check out my newest playlist? I finally put up my summer anthems for 2018 last week, and I am going to try to keep some of those songs off of this one, but I’m not going to make any promises!

Here are your Top 10 songs for September!

Summer On You by PRETTYMUCH
Ring by Cardi B featuring Kehlani
Raggaeton Lento by CNCO featuring Little Mix
Candlelight by Zhavia Ward
Happier by Marshmello featuring Bastille
2002 by Anne-Marie
Ay3 by Ayo & Teo featuring Lil Yachty
Drew Barrymore by Bryce Vine
The Reckoning by Within Temptation featuring Jacoby Shaddix
He Like That by Fifth Harmony

There was something that I did want to talk about on this post. During the first week of the month, I was going through my guide to search the upcoming movies and even my FM (Fuse Music) future line up, I like to record two hours worth of music videos during the week and that’s generally how I’ve been listening to so much rap music in a course of four months! Anyways, I was going through it and found one of there series would be all about a rap clique called G-Unit. If you ever knew me as I was a teenager, you definitely know the significance of this squad very well.

Unfortunately, the day it taped, we had a damn storm and I wasn’t able to really watch the beginning of it but thankfully, the rest of it worked perfectly so I got to hear some of my favorites that came out in 2003 to 2006. I was a little hesitant watching the videos again, I was afraid that they would make me sad but honestly I really enjoyed it. I’m still shocked on the fact that I was remembering the words in certain songs! I still like listening to both Lloyd Banks and The Game; before you freak out that I mentioned The Game – according to some sites, apparently Lloyd Banks isn’t in the group anymore either! After I saw that I was very sad because I have always liked Lloyd’s voice for both rapping and singing, but as long as he continues to make music, I’m perfectly fine with his new direction!

So, on my Spotify playlist, I definitely added quite a bit of old school G-Unit tunes, plus some by Banks, Young Back and Tony Yayo too! I’m very proud of myself in this year for not only giving the genre as a whole another try, but also going back to the ones that helped create the original favorites when I was younger!

What have you be loving this month? Do you have any artists or bands that you used to listen to a lot, that you don’t anymore? What made you stop listening to them?

My Worst Fear

Howdy!

Today’s post is going to be a little interesting. For most people, talking about their worst fears would probably be a bad thing, because of the backlash that could come from family members and/or friends who love to tease them about it at different gatherings and holidays. Honestly, I don’t blame them for wanting to keep quiet about it.

People usually are afraid of “little” things like the ones I mentioned in my fetish and phobia post last month, but I actually have a fear of something that is slowly but surely becoming a “great engineering feat” in the world. Are you confused yet? Let me walk (or in this case, roll) you back to when I was in elementary school in the late 90’s!

I want to say I was probably in second grade when all of my classmates were made to sit out in the middle of the gym floor (except me) while we watched a little movie. Now it wasn’t a cheerful Disney film or anything, this was an educational movie for us kids. I vaguely remember it talking about different careers and what the world would look like with all of the advancing technology people were learning at the time. Surprisingly, this was a very stimulating film for all of us, even if the adults had 80’s styled, big rimmed glasses and denim jumpsuits with big hair to match!

One of the things I actually do remember very well, was the “possibility” of self-driven cars. Now to every single one of my classmates and even some of the teachers, this was pretty cool! There was a scene of a man, seemingly driving this crappy looking orange vehicle with his knees and eating cheese burger with his hands. The car just knew where he wanted to go and it took him there without him ever needing to control the steering wheel and feet controls, and it absolutely terrified me! Funnily enough though, the first thing that everybody says when this pops up on the screen, is “Wow!” Meghan, this is something you could look forward to in the future!” I was both amazed and insulted at that comment, because at the time I wanted to be like everybody else and obviously nobody believed that I could drive my own car without needing all of that!

Now looking back years later and seeing Ford create a self parking car. My worst fears were realized whenever I’d see those commercials on my television, and I have to say it absolutely made me feel like I could throw up everytime it came on my TV and on YouTube!

I should probably explain why I’m afraid of these self-driving cars.

It actually goes back a little bit further in my childhood. I was invited to a birthday party, and the girl’s family lived out in the country and that afternoon as we were leaving, it began to pour down rain–eventually it had turned into a medium size thunderstorm! My mom put me in the car and buckled me in. She went back into the house to call my friend’s mom about how to get there and as it continued to rain down overhead. I seriously thought the car was moving without my mom being in it and pressing on the gas pedal. It was the worst situation I had been in and unfortunately, ever since it happened, I’ve had nightmares of being trapped in an empty car and I am usually rolling down hills or just down the street. Every four months, I have a similar dream of being stuck in a beloved family car without a way of getting out!

I’m getting closer and closer to my thirties and it never fails to me that I can still have that fear. My mom probably doesn’t even remember the incident. and hardly anybody in my family actually knows about this either. I’ve always felt that it’s a stupid little thing that why should I share it? In a way, I’m still asking it as I write this post, but I might get lucky (sorry for your sake!) that other people have the same fear. They might’ve experienced a similar thing during their childhood and it’s played a bigger role in their adult lives. I’ve always wondered if that has something to do with the fact that I’ve never wanted my driver’s licences. I tell people all the time that I can’t be trusted with a car because of my speeding record in my power wheelchair, but maybe this is the real reason for it. I don’t think we’ll ever know the truth about that, but it is an interesting theory to make I think.

So do you have any “weird” phobias that you’d like to share with me? What have you done to try to face and get over them completely?

 

Favorite Biopics!

Hello!

I’ve got another movie list for you today! This one kind of rivals the post I wrote about musicals a few months ago. I like a LOT of biographical films and it’s something that I’m always looking for if my documentaries are getting a little low. I have run out of both genres at the same time, it was a very sad day when that happened! I don’t recommend doing that!

I tried taking out all of the biopics I saw as miniseries on different networks like History and Lifetime because I figured that they’d take over this list and as I was busy searching for my favorites I did realize that I was right, I’ve seen quite a bit! So this is a list of big films that there were released from 2001 to 2016. Don’t freak out too much on me please, I’ll only discuss ten films but I will say there a lot of others that I’ve seen that also deserve to be on here too, but I only wanted to talk ten so I apologize.

Bride Of The Wind – 2001 starring Sarah Wynter, Jonathan Pryce, and Vincent Perez

This was one of the most recent biopic films I’ve watched, I think I saw it back in early September – from July to October I was in a big movie mood where I even broke one of my own rules and watched movies beyond 1999 and I rarely do that!

Anyways, this is film about the woman and composer Alma Mahler, as she marries three times. She was first married to the older Jewish composer and conductor Gustav Mahler, when their youngest died at the age of two and she went away because she had a break down and met her second husband Walter Gropius, there she had an affair with a painter by the name of Oskar Kokoschka who painted her as his muse and one of those paintings was used as the title of the film itself, The Bride Of The Wind. Her third husband was the writer Franz Werfel.

The story is very interesting, although it does portray Alma as this spoiled and selfish woman throughout the film. It was basically the only thing I honestly hated about it, although it could have been very true. Gustav makes her give up composing while they’re married and I would be bored with myself if I had nannies taking care of my children. Other than that, I thought it was a good film. I’ll never be able to see the High Sparrow the same, but you know!

Ray – 2004 starring Jamie Foxx, Kerry Washington

Ray will always be a favorite of mine. I actually saw this while I was in school and of course, we had to skip the drug using scenes but I always found it absolutely heartbreaking whenever Ray’s mother forces her young son to try to find her on his own after he becomes blind. And the fact that he blames himself for the death of his younger brother too. I have to prepare myself for those scenes because I know I will start bawling my eyes if I’m not too careful.

The first time I watched this, I wasn’t paying too much attention of great castings until I saw Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles. I thought it was the best decision ever! You literally thought this was the son of Ray Charles or something because he just mirrored him. This was also my second film I ever watched with Kerry Washington in it, before she was made Olivia Pope in Scandal. I thought she also did a great job of bringing Ray’s first wife to life too.

Marie Antoinette – 2006 starring Kirsten Dunst, Jason Schwartzman, Rip Torn, and Rose Bryne

This was my first ever historical biopic I ever watched and I was fairly early in my teens when I watched it too. I never saw it in school, this was a film I watched on TV but don’t ask me whether or not it had commercials included with it because I don’t remember. I do know was after I saw it, I was obsessed with the fashion of the time of the real Dauphine and then Queen of France, Marie Antoinette; later on I became obsessed with French pastries after seeing Marie’s 21st birthday scene.

You get a real sense of Marie’s troubles of conceiving a child with her husband when her mother and ambassadors talk about it in practically every other scene. All that stress doesn’t work well with trying to having a baby, nor does it help if Louis, the Dauphin of France wasn’t interested either. Of course, when it came to producing an heir to the throne, it’s always the wives fault. Never the men!

Public Enemies – 2009 starring Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, and Marion Cotillard

Yes, I’m talking about Public Enemies again! I told you, at the time I was obsessed with it before and after it came out.

I’ve always wondered why in the world I wanted to watch this movie so much, because beforehand I wasn’t really interested in the 1920-30’s crime wave, but then once I got into John Dillinger’s story, I somehow got into Bonnie and Clyde afterwards so I’ve been trying to rack my brain for the answer in the last several years! I do have a theory though, maybe it was because John Dillinger was a Hoosier native, because once I found out that piece of information I just searched for anything I could find, so in other words I screwed myself of how the movie would end in a way.

Side note: I totally forgot Christian Bale was in it! I was doing the list and he popped up on the credits and I was like, yeah that makes sense! Oops!

The Runaways – 2011 starring Kristen Stewart, Dakota Fanning

I do remember how I got into this movie. When they were doing promo for the Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 1 Jimmy Kimmel had invited the entire cast to be on the show and he had mentioned that both Kristen and Dakota were doing this film together about the 70’s all female rock band The Runaways.

Once it finally came out, I actually had mom rent it for me and I’ve been obsessed with her ever since! I think Kristen Stewart as Joan Jett was a very good choice as she’s a little naturally awkwardly shy but passionate too and you get that right away. I’m not too familiar with the real story of the ladies of the band and their rise to fame, but I thought it was interesting all the way around.

The Theory of Everything – 2014 starring Eddie Redmayne, Felicity Jones, and David Twelis

If you are a long time reader, you already know of my thoughts and opinions about this movie, but for those of you who don’t. It is one of my favorite biopics ever! I think everybody who was involved in making this story come alive was amazing!

I have to say  what I said in my What’s The Point Of Acting post, that Eddie Redmayne is only a good choice because they needed to show the progress of Stephan’s condition from the start to the present. At the start of it, you get little hints of it showing up in the way he picks up things and definitely in the dance scene, where his hand is awkwardly shaped in her hand.

As the story goes on, you also start to see the dynamic change of narrative of the characters. The movie is about Stephan and his first wife Jane’s relationship and how she respected his wishes to continue living and proving his theories in the scientific world. So I have to give Felicity Jones as much credit as I do with Eddie in her role of Jane Hawking too.

Straight Outta Compton – 2014 starring Corey Hawkins, Jason Mitchell, and O’Shea Jackson Jr.

I always have a soft spot for musical biopics, and apparently I still have a thing for 80’s rap music. That’s what happens when your mother was a teenager in that time, as a child it was a custom to fall in love with that kind of music as it wasn’t until I was about seven or eight when I started listening to music and my tastes flourished. She had a LOT of great rap music at one point, just don’t ask me what she listens to now because it’s definitely not this.

It took me a bit to finally watch the movie. I felt like I had to wait a whole year because there was so much hype behind it. When it landed on HBO I was very happy, but I still can’t believe it came out in 2014, I thought it was like last year! I can’t keep anything straight anymore! I also thought the actor who played Ice Cube was a random guy that looked like Ice Cube. Don’t worry, my mom set me straight after I finished with the film that he was his son and it totally makes so much sense now!

The Danish Girl – 2015 starring Eddie Redmayne, Alicia Vikander

Yes, I have two movies that star Eddie Redmayne on this list. This was another I had to wait a bit to see as well because from all of the hype for it.

I had fun trying to figure out information for this one, because it’s loosely based off the real Danish girl: Lili Elbe, the first person to have sex reassessment surgery in 1930. The film was about her as a male coming to terms with her women-ly side as Lili, it was also about her relationship with her wife Gerda Gottlieb throughout the process of transitioning. I thought it was a beautiful movie!

I Saw The Light – 2015 starring Tom Hiddleston, Elizabeth Olsen

I’m still shocked I decided to watch this as I’m not into country music. I do have my tendencies every once in a while, but like I said with talking about Straight Outta Compton, I have a weakness for music biopics. I mean, I do have three of them on this list alone!

I had some issues with Tom Hiddleston playing Hank Williams, mostly because Tom is a British actor but I thought overall he did pretty good. This is another artist that I don’t know much about, but I do know the story of how he died though, so I kind of went into willing and came out with a new respect for this person. You know the crazy part is, I actually recognized quite a few of these songs and I’m pretty sure dad’s only watched it once! He’s the old country music fan compared to my sister who mostly goes for the younger ones (plus Tim McGraw but he never ages!).

Jackie – 2016 starring Natalie Portman, Peter Sarsgaard

This is the most recent movie I’ve seen, I actually watched it back in September or early October.

I still watch reruns of anything about the Kennady’s on TV. I find that entire family so interesting! I’ve always thought of Jackie Kennady as a strong woman before I saw this film, like how was judged for the fact on how much money she spent on clothes as she loved French designers. The woman lost two of her children, three as John Kennady Jr. died in 1999 as caused by a plane crash with his wife Carolyn. Anyways, I thought Natalie Portman did a fantastic job in bringing this strong women to live again for the younger generations. Although, the story of Jackie is different than you’d expect as it’s about the after how Jackie acted after the assassination of her husband in Dallas, Texas in 1963.

What are your favorite biographical movies? Have you seen any of the films listed above?

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Mary Vs. Jane: The Real Usurper

Hi 🙂

I’m really enjoying these different history posts I’ve been doing lately. I’m not trying to do one every month but it kind of just happens. The last one about King Richard III and King Henry VII was completely accidental, I actually wanted to do this first but I needed to think about how the other post would do with my audience and so I decided to wait a bit.

Queen Mary I is the oldest daughter of King Henry VIII and Spanish princess Katherine of Aragon. After Katherine declined to annual her marriage to Henry so he could marry his mistress and one of her ladies-in-waiting Anne Boleyn. She was set away from court and was forced to stay away from their daughter. They were technically still married to as he secretly wed Anne and after Katherine passed Princess Mary was then considered a bastard and lost her way to inherit the throne.

Henry had a total of six siblings, but only two of his sisters survived to adulthood. The youngest, Princess Mary was married to Louis XI of France but they didn’t last very long when he died shortly after. When she came back to England, she secretly married Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk who was one of her brother’s best friends. Since they also married in secret, they had to pay a hefty fine to the King for not asking him for permission to marry. Mary and Charles had a total of four children. The only male heirs who were both named Henry died young, but daughters Lady Eleanor and Lady Frances survived to adulthood.

Lady Frances Brandon married Henry Grey, the Marquess of Dorset (who was the great-great-grandson of Elizabeth Woodville and her first first husband Thomas Grey) they had a total of three daughters themselves: Lady Jane, Lady Catherine and Lady Mary. The girls were King Henry VIII’s great-nieces and they were born into a Protestant family. Now I don’t know that much about Lady Jane Grey, only that she was put into succession in King Edward VI’s will and she was married to Lord Robert Dudley. This is all I really know of this part of her personal life.

Lady Jane Grey was the granddaughter of the sister of the former King of England and born into a Protestant family, so she had the means to keep the religion afloat until Queen Mary sent her troops into England and she arrested Jane and her husband and father for their crimes for going against the Act of Succession that clearly states that once Edward died, she would rule after him. Edward had tried to bypass this law and basically threw her into the woods. Jane is known as the “nine day queen” because she only had nine days on the throne of England. To historians, she’s the usurper because she went around the law, but I don’t see it that way.

When Henry finally had his son and kept marrying these other women to make sure he had another “male” heir in case Edward did not survive, which he didn’t and Edward died at the same age as Henry’s older brother Prince Arthur. The kingdom roughly should have went to the Lady Mary, since as Henry got older he did put both Mary and Elizabeth back in line of succession. However, something has always made me wonder, when King Henry renounced the Catholic faith, why did he put Mary back in line to the throne when he knew she still practiced the religion? Did he grow to regret his decision to create the Church of England or did he only do it, so she wouldn’t leave for Spain or France and start a war with her half brother and her homeland?

England was practicing both religions, let’s be honest about here. Lady Jane could have kept the faith but when Queen Mary came and had her killed for trying to go around the law, she brought Catholicism back. In her reign, Mary set ablaze to the Protestant martyrs and with that, she gained the nickname “Bloody Mary” because she killed over hundreds of people for not accepting the true faith. After failing to give an heir with her Spanish husband King Phillip, England went back to being a Protestant kingdom with Queen Elizabeth I as she was the daughter of the reason why King Henry VIII had renounced the religion in the first place.

So I do get the fact that Jane was put on the throne after Edward went around the Act but I doubt she wanted that role or knew what would happen to her after those nine days, but I wouldn’t call her a usurper. Mary was a devout Catholic and was going to change the religion back after her father spent so much time and effort into it. I often think even if Mary wasn’t put back in line anyways, she obviously had the resources to create an army anyways, she would have fought for that crown.

So what do you think, who is the real usurper? Lady Jane Grey or Queen Mary I? 

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