Life | Love, Death & Sickness

WARNING: I don’t usually do this, but I felt the need to include this little warning for anyone who can be triggered by the events that have happened recently. It involves a death of a beloved pet.

Hello!

This past month has been a freaking roller coaster! There were so many random things happen that were bad and good that they’re starting to blend together. For today’s post, we are going to go back to the very beginning of the chaos and weed out the special things that happened.

We start at the last day of March. It was a bittersweet kind of day for my whole family. I was able to get on the floor early in the day to go outside and visit with the cats, and after I came back inside I decided to hang out with my mom and ChiChi The last few days, Chichi had been feeling like crap. She was having issues breathing and my dad had noticed her heart was running a lot faster than normally, to the point where my mom was having to monitor with her nursing equipment. Anyways, while I was in the living room and actually leaning up against her “step” onto the couch and as I was doing it, the little dog decided to scare the crap out of me by coming out behind me and licking half of my face until she was ready to get down on the floor again.

She was enjoying lying on her blanket basking in the sun by the front door. I had been told to not play with her because of how she’d been feeling the past couple of days, so I gave her some of her toys and we enjoyed looking at our neighborhood for a little bit. After a few minutes, she decided that it was too hot and she curled up next to mom on the couch. After a few minutes I asked my mom to help me back on top of my bed, and then all hell broke loose. Chichi had collapsed at the bottom of her step and had a seizure, which resulted in my parents taking her to the vet immediately where they made the ultimate decision to put her to sleep so she didn’t have to suffer anymore.

The best thing about this story though was what happened when they arrived at the vet’s office. He was just about to close for the day and was probably looking forward to going home, but ChiChi wanted to make sure she left this world on her own terms. She tried to bite the bastard, so they had to put her in a muzzle but I have to say, I hope when it’s my time to go, I want the same amount of spunk in my veins to do something like that!

We are still healing after her loss. The house is definitely quieter without her high-pitched barks at the poor neighbors that enter the house or yard. I’ve had the operatic J. G. Wentworth commercial eight times and I cannot tell you how many times I’ve wanted to ask my parents where ChiChi is, and I know she can’t be anywhere on the couch because my mom doesn’t keep a blanket out for her. The food bowls and pee towels are put up and her step has been fixed to match with the rest of the couch. The only thing that is still out are her toys and none of us have dared to move them yet. I actually sleep with her blanket she used to soak up the sun to cover my feet at night.

Two days later, we left home to start our road trip to visit my mom’s side up north. We hadn’t seen anybody since late September I think. The drive went pretty good, we were unable to visit our favorite Starbucks in Martinsville because they were working on the road and GPS took us on another route that really messed with us. My brother-in-law Brandon was driving and I sat in the passenger seat with limited space for my legs and feet but as we reached Indy, Brandon and I were more than uncomfortable at that point. I had to literally remind the both of us to be patient as we attempted to shift positions in our seats. Our destination couldn’t arrive fast enough for us!

Once we got there, I heard Brandon’s back pop like four times. After my sister opened my door and removed the pillows that were shoved underneath my feet for the whole ride; I was so happy to bend my legs again and they were somewhat sore for like an hour later. As we went into my aunt and uncle’s house and hugged everyone, I was busy observing my nephew have an absolute blast with my Aunt Laurie and nana. He showed them his cars and played with Myla a couple of times too. It wasn’t long before we ate pizza and had even more family come over for the evening. My cousin Amy and her wife Danielle and their kids came over. Nolan had playmates and was thoroughly enjoying himself! He was a flirt and a mooch at the same time.

However, once we began nighttime, either we were delirious after the long day with driving, playing and talking our heads off, Nolan wanted nothing to do with sleeping and he became a complete goofball. We all slept in the living room and Nolan is used to having a fan and nightlight, and as we were inching towards sleep, he wanted to argue who he wanted to sleep with and at that point, we had the lights off but one cell phone light that shone brightly on the wall and Nolan was like Peter Pan and found his shadow and we just erupted with laughter! Suddenly everything he did in those couple of minutes were hilarious and I mean, I had tears coming out of my eyes and I knew I wasn’t the only one! Thankfully, he figured out the best position was in between his mom and dad and we all drifted off to sleep.

The next morning, Laurie and Mike made breakfast of both cinnamon and orange rolls! It has become a great traditional and is the only time I get to have my favorite orange rolls because neither one of my parents like them!

On the agenda for that Saturday, once Uncle Rick came over the younger kids were going to hunt eggs all along the front yard and it was so precious to watch all three of them search for the eggs. Amy and Danielle had made Nolan special eggs and they were full of different goodies like candy (he likes gummies the most!) and little toys, but the most popular were the confetti eggs! He had so much fun and was sweet enough to share his treasures with his mommy, mimi, and his favorite bestie: Danielle.

After the eggs, we went back inside to have some lunch and I wasn’t able to eat very much but I figured it was because of the rolls I had a few hours ago. Now there was something very different about this visit, because Easter finally landed on my nana’s birthday. So, once most of the guests were finishing with their plates, the cake was brought out and it was so good! My Aunt Laurie made array of cupcakes in both carrot cake and vanilla batters. I had a vanilla cupcake and it was really good, but my eyes were still glued to my nana’s as it much larger than anyone else’s and I knew she would make it last for a while as she has her own freezer for this exact purpose! She’s smart like that but really, she just has a bad sweet tooth!

The next thing we did was make our way into the garage to paint Easter and spring-y scenes. My nana and I each had a different thing, she had this beautiful bumblebee windmill that she did very well on and I got this beautiful sign that is of a mason jar of flowers with the words “Hello Spring” at the bottom. I took my time on it, because I was working with something I don’t usually do and I am still shocked how good I was able to do the lettering, because I was going to have my sister do that part because she can do various things with this sort of thing but Danielle and I were the last ones to finish our masterpieces. I was thoroughly impressed with what I was able to do with it!

Unfortunately, I don’t remember a lot that happened after that. My uncle David made a late appearance and I remember seeing him and enjoying his voice and laughter again, and then I wanted to go on the couch and Nolan also went to lay down on the lounge chair on the opposite side of the living room, and we both passed out. I’ve been known to crash early but usually I show symptoms of it like crankiness or just being uncomfortable and since I was just painting and having a great time like not even 15 minutes before this, it was a bit of a shock for everyone. The next day I felt fine again but I just thought it was from the pain I had and took medicine for while in the garage that afternoon. We didn’t leave Sunday until probably noon but we hugged everyone and I made sure I had enough for any movement in my seat because I refused to be stuck in the same place for a 4 hour drive back home!

Sunday night, I felt pretty good overall. I allowed myself to relax and watch some TV, but honestly all I did was binge watch Criminal Minds on Netflix and had a good sleep that night. As far Monday, it was absolutely beautiful! I was able to go outside with my current Harry Potter book, journal, and camera to hang out with the cats on the deck. We have found out that sitting on a rug helps my bottom a lot especially for multiple hours! It has been somewhat odd to sit like on the wood without being in my wheelchair mainly because I am up close with our cats again and they are clearly loving this just as much as I am and really hope I get to continue to do this as we go into summertime!

And then, everything changed and time seemed to go faster than any other time, including the three day visit I just did basically, because the same day I have a steady knowledge of was the 7th of April 2021, after that, everything is a blur. In the matter of two days, I came down with the stomach flu. I hadn’t had it since possibly late 2008 or early 2009. In the thick of it though was probably the worst because I was so depressed as I was sick. I despise being sick in any form but stomach flu has to be the worst in my opinion because I was basically attached to my commode for 72 hours at best. I wouldn’t eat anything other than applesauce, popsicles, and ice cubes. I drank Gatorade and water like they were nothing and tried so many pills to make everything stop flowing out of my body. I was having to call my mom every 20 minutes or less and would have to call her in the middle of the night for the same reasons. It was so much and I just wanted out of there emotionally and mentally, and then as suddenly as it came into our house, it went away.

I have been extremely lucky at avoiding different sicknesses, except for what happened at the start of 2020. Other than that, I have not experienced anything else and I do not understand how it came about because we only had two other members come down with similar things but nothing was hardcore as mine. The first three days I started getting better, I was so hungry and would literally ask my mom if she was going to the store to look for this , this, and that. I would wake up in the middle of the night wanting food but as my body began to center again, the cravings subsided and I am not as worried about how much movement I do that could produce bad consequences for everyone!

Okay, I think I am finally done talking about everything. I hope everyone else was able to enjoy their Easter weekend and to anyone who has the stomach bug or who had it recently, I really hope you start to feel better sooner rather than later.

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Nolan’s 1st Party!

Hello!

Last weekend we celebrated my nephew’s first birthday with a big party! It’s been a long time since I have been at his house. I told my mom that he had to been around three months at the time, because Brandon and I were watching Black Panther after it just came out on DVD. It was very difficult to keep my eyes on the screen and not on a certain little baby in the pack-n-play! He was surprisingly very good for us, until towards the ending where he wanted to be fed quickly and he wasn’t – he wasn’t very happy! He has yet to grow out of that by the way!

The theme of the party had changed a few times over the coming months, but ultimately they decided on one thing: Llamas! So, in March, my sister found him this cute little llama stuffed toy at the store for Easter and he apparently liked it so much that she set out to find other items to fit in that theme, thus making the entire party about llamas. The only thing that wasn’t in a llama shape was the cake, although she did try to find someone to make one for her back in May!

One of my favorite things that had llamas on it, were our shirts that Blondie found for us. Both sides of the family were given customize T-Shirts of a black silhouette of a llama with whatever we are to Nolan. For example, I am his “auntie” so that’s what I got on mine, but both of his grandmothers have different names. My mom is “Mimi” while Brandon’s mom is “Grammie” to him. I have always had a small stack of tops that fit perfectly on my shoulders and if there was a special design on the front, it isn’t blocked by my hands the whole time the stack was even smaller! I’m very glad to tell you that I can add this to the pack! You can see everything, I love it so much!

My mom and I were the first ones to get there. I was greeted by Chipper and the cats. Chipper was SO excited to see us, but the look on Nolan’s face when he realized that Mimi was the one waking him up from a nap in his crib, was so cute! He was so surprised! He looked stunned when he found out I was there too! We were there about 10 minutes before my dad and our “uncle” Russell came over. Nolan was very happy to see his papaw! He just wrapped his small arms around his neck (and beard) and my dad was all too happy to deny him. Nolan was a little unsure about Russell at first but after a couple of minutes, he actually asked to be held by him and it was so adorable.

They were originally supposed to have 30+ people coming to the party, but since we were under a Tornado warning all afternoon, we were happy with the small get together instead. It was an interesting mix of people though, the best thing was everybody got along perfectly! We ate food, chit-chat with one another, played with Nolan. Our friend Jayde, who is expecting her first baby boy later this year, ate around three cupcakes. She and I made a deal that she could have the cupcakes and I can have the broccoli. I love broccoli! She fully agreed to that! I’m actually shocked on how little I snacked though, because I’m known to eat quite a bit at parties but there wasn’t a lot of room for me to eat by myself or have my mom feed me easily without being in the way of little guy eating his strawberries in his high chair! Honestly, I made myself a deal at the end of the party, I was going to have one vanilla cupcake. I did get my cupcake, but I almost regretted it on the way home…

After everybody grabbed a seat, we decided it was time to open some presents. He got a LOT of interesting toys for his birthday! The first one that “he” opened was from his Grammie and his aunties too. Blondie opened the cards first, which is always a nice gesture even though they are usually the last present anybody ever wants to open, because they usually have a message inside that could make you cry in front of your guests. Nolan was another story entirely, he loved his cards! The one that his Grammie got him had shiny glitter inside the number one symbol on the front, so you could essentially shake it like a snow globe and everything will move around. He literally did not want to put it down! It was in his right hand during the rest of the unwrapping.

These are some of the gifts that I could remember of the party.

• A small red and blue slide (that was wrapped in Batman paper! I loved it, and I’m not a big fan of him either!)
• A large stack of different summery clothes.
• Bubble making lawn mower
• Tool bench and belt full of tools he’ll need to fix my ‘broken’ wheelchairs
• A standing drum set
• A big yellow truck to put all of his toys
• Paw Patrol trucks with characters of the show
• A book for bedtime made specifically for him as it has a blond baby named Nolan.

There were a lot more that you will see at in the gallery below. He will certainly be really busy making lots of noises in the next few months! My sister actually sent mom a picture of him standing at the drum kit in the middle of the pack-n-play without any help of the walls after the party was over! We’re getting closer to seeing cutie pie walking around on his own.

Once we were finished with the presents, we moved on watching him eat his smash cake. For this, he had to become semi-naked and as much as he loves being like this, he absolutely hates taking off his clothes! After everything was off, he was placed in his high chair again. I will be inserting the before and after pictures of the cake itself in a minute, but Nolan isn’t necessarily a messy eater, he likes to inspect things so he was really puzzled by this cake at first. He literally only would stick one finger into it at a time. Brandon quickly realized that we’d be here forever if he continues doing this, so to make things go faster, he literally grabbed Nolan’s hands and planted them right into the cake! Nolan was not sure what to do with all of the icing on his hands so he was literally shaking his arms but he actually accepted the fact that it did taste pretty good!

The part that made me remember that I am still teaching him things without even realizing it, was when he started leaning his mouth into the cake. As everybody was laughing and taking pictures at this, I was like “oh, crap!” Whenever I eat in the kitchen, he is at the same level as me, so he can watch me like a hawk, because I do lean into my plate so my tongue can reach everything. So seeing the now one year old mimicking what I do for every breakfast, lunch, and dinner, was pretty cute! He was trying his best to get into it, to the point that my sister actually had to hold the cake up in front of him to reach with his mouth! He’s such a smart cookie!

Once he was done eating the cake–well, actually his mommy had to take it away from him! He wasn’t very happy about that, but after he was basically washed down with many, many wipes, he was rewarded with his new toys! He quickly went back to his tool belt and started waving it around in the air. This was also the time where half of the guests were leaving to go home. Russell and dad were one of the firsts to leave because we needed them to be ready to get back into the house, which was a fun mini adventure on its own!

My mom and I left about 10 minutes later, but we were going to get food from Applebee’s and it was roughly a 20-25 minute wait to pick everything up, we decided to go look at the expensive houses in town. I’ve been watching Property Brothers like crazy lately so this was my jam! However between the two of us, we realized how different our tastes in houses were as far as exterior design goes! I still love my ranch-style houses, but even I started finding some of these larger houses to be very beautiful, especially that Tudor house! Once our 20 minutes were up, we went to pick up our food and eventually made our way home!

I had an awesome time spending the day with a great bunch of people, and what I think really made it better was the fact that after the small storm we had, the sky actually perked up. It was sunny again, which was really nice considering how much rain we’ve had in the last couple of weeks or so! I also had lots of fan watching my little nephew enjoy time with each family and friends as well!

What do you think is the most weirdest theme for a birthday? What did you think of my day too?

The Cake Flavored Book Tag!

Howdy!

It’s been a long time since I’ve done a tag, and I’ve been searching for fun things to post on here that wouldn’t consist of me doing a lot of thinking (much less move around!) so I have been reading other blogs in the last month and I have somebody who loves tags just as much as I do, and that is Shaa and she is a book blogger, so majority of the tags she’s done are about her favorite books. I checked it out, and I thought this would be a really fun thing to do. It is similar to the Books & Cookies tag I did a couple of months ago, but this is about cakes so how I can turn this down?!

Chocolate – A dark book that you loved

I thought about this question quite a bit because the word “dark” can literally mean different genres. At least I think it does, so I came up with two books that I think are “dark” in every sense of the word and they are Helter Skelter: The True Story Of The Manson Murders by Vincent Bugliosi with Curt Gentry and Night by Elie Wiesel. I remember reading both books in my Novels class and was absolutely floored by the horror each one discussed so that’s my answer.

Vanilla – A light read

This one was somewhat easier on me. However, there is more darkness to the story, but it is a very short book. I read this story while I was in my Short Stories class, literally a semester after completing the Novels course! It is The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. It’s about 64 and a really haunting read if you’re into that sort of thing!

Red Velvet – A book that gave you mixed emotions

Oh boy! There’s only one book that belongs with this question and it is The Ring and The Crown by Melissa de la Cruz. I thought the story of Princess Marie-Victoria was really good but unfortunately there was way too much information and far too many characters to keep up with so I had a love/hate relationship with the book itself.

Strawberry – A sweet book

A sweet book. Hmmmm…. I think I would have to say To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han. I really loved that book. It just brought me back to my high school days and I really enjoyed being able to look back at those memories with a smile instead full of regret as I use to do! I really need to get back to reading the sequel sometime. I might wait to reading it in the summertime. That sounds like a good idea!

Cheesecake – A book that you would recommend to anyone

Oh jeez. I have a lot of books that I would recommend to people, but I think if anyone wants to experiment with the erotica genre, and use something else besides Fifty Shades; maybe you consider Roxy Sloane’s novella series The Invitation. The first book is just 50 pages but it’s page turner and if you love British men, this will be right up your alley, trust me!

Coffee Cake – A book that you started but never finished

On my Goodreads profile, I have a total of five books that I’ve started by never finished but I think the two that have bothered me the most are Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Aszkaban by J.K. Rowling and Glass Sword by Victoria Aveyard. The reason why I haven’t finished HPATPOA is because the movie has probably been my favorite out of the entire series, so I have trouble with comparing them side by side thus I’ve never been able to complete it. The other one is mostly because I go in and out of fantasy/magic genre. Originally, I stopped because I wanted a break… oops!

Carrot Cake – A book with great writing

Personally, I think there are at least three books that have had really great writing and they are: The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (again!), Me Before You by JoJo Moyes, and Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard. The reason why I’ve chosen these three stories are because I thought they each have their good notes, but the one common bond they all share is that you can clearly picture everything that is going on within the story. I have a permanent image and to each one of them.

In The Yellow Wallpaper, I still have a sense of grief and am completely terrified to see anything on my walls. Whereas Me Before You brings me hope of understanding emotionally and physically as a  disability person. And finally, Red Queen means a lot for me. The fact that the writing itself was so vivid that I could see Mare running away, basically ducking and jumping out of a window; this somehow made me want to write a story with that much action and detail.

If you like mixing cake with books, you should do this tag too! Link it back to me if you remember, okay? Have you read any of the books I listed above?

Birthday Bash | Part 1

Howdy!

So last week was my birthday and the celebration was divided into two days: the actual day of my birth and the following weekend. The reason why we did that is because if I don’t hang out with all of my family, it’s just weird! Even while my sister was gone for 2 hours to collegea a couple of years ago, we went up there to visit for my birthday as a surprise! We have lunch at Steak n Shake, and walk around the campus for a little bit. Blondie might be closer to home nowadays, but between she and Brandon, they both work and have classes during the week so we had to resort in waiting for the weekend to hang out with them.

Besides, I wanted to spend my actual birthday with my nana and the main reason was because since papaw has been gone, holidays and even birthdays are not the same anymore. I know my papaw was around though, because I woke up super early that morning with the story of the fact he never got to finish his Red Lobster meal for two days, because I decided to come early! It was something he would tell me every year, that he never got to eat all of his meal. Sorry papaw!

Despite the fact that it was my day, I originally wanted to keep everything a surprise from my nana, wanted her to have that look on her face of us coming into her house celebrating my birthday like we used to, but in order to make sure somebody baked me a cake, we had to tell her. She told me that she’s still surprised because I had kept that secret for like three months but she understood that making sure there was a cake or in this case cupcakes, was there that I had to spoil the surprise. After telling her, I started making another banner like the candy corn banner we made for Halloween. I made a “Happy” with a selection of dark colors and “Birthday” had the more vintage colors. We even found a green that matched the living room carpet in her house!!

I am a cupcake fan, I think I’ve always been more on the side of cupcakes because I don’t like a big slice of cake as everybody else. I’m also not a big fan of frosting either! I think I’d rather have a naked cake instead! One of these days, I’ll figure out how to make those cake pops because I feel like they’d be more up my alley than anything else! Sorry to continue down this slope, I don’t necessarily like chocolate cake anymore either! This was the one year that I got to have a vanilla cake because half the time it was divided up between my family and my nana and papaw! My papaw was more about ice cream and cookies than he ever was about cake in general though! Well, besides the occasional apple pie at Thanksgiving – that could only be served with chocolate ice cream!

Anyways, she had my mom buy her some skull paper liners for the muffin tins but she’s also used the aluminum foil liners and something about that or the temperature in the kitchen and they became very dough-y after baking! They still looked like cupcakes though, they just looked tough because of the spiders and sugar skulls on the sides of the liners! She baked them the day before my birthday as I wanted to help decorate them. So we colored them with greens, blues, and orange with the white frosting but I wanted to try something that I had seen on TV quite a few times.

I’ve seen where if you don’t have a piping bag you can use a ziplock baggy by snipping off  the sides and just pulling the frosting through the one side that has a decorative tip (I originally had one, but it got lost in the bag!) and just to see what that does. I think it would have worked better for me if I could have seen what I was doing! Since I was using my right foot is my guide, I couldn’t see around it so I was literally checking every five seconds to see if I was even hitting the cupcake at all! We didn’t put a lot of icing into the baggy so I could cover three cupcakes and majority of the frosting went on the bottom of my foot! I think with more practice and maybe switching the feet around, I could do it better!

After that, we just hung out for a bit… looking over some of our family history and talked too much about a secret project. No, I won’t tell you and no, it has nothing to do with my blog or anything for Disability Horizons! 😉 So that’s all I can share about day one of festivities! I’ll have a second post up not next week, but the week after! Next week is already booked up enough as it is!

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Cake In A Mug!

Hey guys,

So I’m here with a little baking post! I think the last one I wrote about were the cookies at Christmas, but technically those are premade so yeah! As you can see from the title, we made these cakes inside mugs! You might be skeptical right now, but I’m not going to lie, it’s pretty incredible!

This wasn’t even my idea! My nana found it through her Facebook, if I remember correctly it was from “On This Day” sidebar. She sent me this little status one day and I just thought it was a fluke despite seeing it done on TV. She really wanted to try this out so she had my mom get like six different cake mixes a few weekends ago. She got two angel food  cakes and strawberry, lemon, chocolate, yellow, and white mixes. She also got the idea of storing them in mason jars, I wish I could’ve read my mom’s brain when she read that section of the grocery list!

What you’ll need for this:

• 2 different cake mixes
• big bowl
• whisk
• water
• coffee mug (has to be microwaveable)

She asked me of the selection she had, what mix I wanted to try and I was really curious about the lemon so we tried it out with the angel food mix. She took both mixtures of their boxes and put them into a big or medium size bowl. We tried to mix them together with a wooden spoon but it didn’t work out well for me so we switched to a whisk. When I first went to stir it, I swooshed the powder right out of the bowl and onto the floor and the lower half of my body!

After a good stir, my nana grabbed us some coffee mugs, both are mostly used for soups. For this, you need to take out three tablespoons of dry mixture. She did the first one, but I did the last two, I even leveled it off with my right foot! There’s not many times where both feet work together on something! Anyways, next you put in two tablespoons of water and stir it until the lumps are out. Lastly put it in your microwave for one minute and when it’s done you let it cool like a regular cake and put on frosting, fruit or whipped cream to finish it off! Personally, I don’t necessarily like any frosting, much less whipped cream! Yuck! So I just ate my little serving as it was and it was pretty good without anything on it.

The flavor is very subtle compared to the actual smell when we first opened up the bags. It’s very sponge-y, thanks to the angel food. Since we only used a small bit of our mix, we had to have a good place to store this rest. This is where my nana’s second idea comes into play! We poured the mix into a measuring cup since we figured it would be easier to put it into the jars, nope! We still made a mess! This time it was nana’s turn! We each got our own jar full of lemon/angel cake mix ready for a midnight snack!

I think my nana wants to do the chocolate one next! Third will be confetti! Yay!

Have you ever tried the microwaveable cakes before? What is your favorite?

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