November Playlist

Hello!

Since I’ve been kind of turning these monthly playlists into mini wrap ups, I figured this was the perfect way to talk about October and why exactly I was staying at a nursing home for a bit.

So, let’s rewind back to around August as it was the month where everything went up a notch.

My dad has a lot of health issues, but at the end of summer, we started noticing he was losing the usage of his right arm. He has had many MRIs and X-Rays in the past few years and the majority of his trouble areas are in and around his neck and spine. He has broken several discs in the past, but now as he ages, he’s continued to add more arches and pains. He has been told to have surgery since I was a kid, but he’s always turned them down for risking his ability to take care of me. If you’ve ever met my dad, you know how stubborn he is, so you wouldn’t expect anything less from him, especially for something like this.

Four years ago, when my mom had her surgeries, I made the decision to staying in a nursing home while she was there in the hospital and recovering, and since she is a nurse at a really great residential home, and at the time where my nana was living, the idea was simple but most importantly practical for everyone involved. I would spend my week there, before going to stay at my sister’s on the weekend. I was having my mom’s co-workers and friends basically take care of me like the rest of the people there. I was even allowed to get my hair cut by the hairdresser there! Honestly, I had a lot of fun spending time with my nana and the other ladies, and of course playing bingo too!

Fast forward to now, the idea of dad having surgery and knowing how indeed stubborn he truly is, made my mom and I make that crucial decision of staying at the nursing home for two weeks. We had made this decision pretty quickly, because we knew if we had it planned out well enough, my parents could essentially forget about me, and focus on dad’s surgery and recovery. We figured it out within a month or maybe less than that, because we discussed it quite a bit beforehand, so it’s difficult to narrow down the timeline.

This time was completely different.

There were things that I expected like my tiny calf muscles screaming at me during the first week because I was rolling around in my wheelchair the entire building, and like my dad, I am also stubborn and rarely asked for help, because I actually liked it. It was when I was pushing my folded bed in breakfast table with some stuff I had I would need for that day, down the massive hall that I was actually allowing myself a break and had someone carry it to my destination, which was always the activity room.

What we didn’t intend on happening was the edge of my knees, all the way down to my ankles and toes would become very swollen. I have never experience this before, it actually freaked us out because my feet felt like balloons and looked like they were going to explode at any moment. After that, I was put on a water pill and gradually it helped with the swelling, but I would still have some issues around the ridge of my feet, especially on my left foot, which makes sense considering I was using that foot to push myself around, but yeah that was a fun little surprise.

I was only supposed to stay there for two weeks, but I kept having the date to go home pushed back… twice.

My nana had moved up north with my aunt and uncle a few months later, so I would be alone this time around, and I’ll be honest I was worried about being on my own, but I was in really good hands too, as the longer I was there, the more I was making friends with the other residents too. This was my first time having a roommate since 2002, and she was a lovely lady and we sat together for meals, and we would go to the different activities. The first I participated in were these weaving pumpkins. They gave us a wired outline of a pumpkin and there were two different types of yarn to us, i went with the skinnier and darker orange whle my roommate went for the Cheeto-like yarn as it was bright orange and very puffy!

Besides doing lots of crafts, they played a lot of games too!

The first full day, not only did I weave a pumpkin, but I played Screamo for the first time ever. What is Screamo you say? Well, like my dad said, it’s like Yahtzee and it is, you have two dices and a sheet with the numbers 1-12 including 12 chips or coins, and the group goes around and rolls the dice and whatever it lands on, like a four and five which adds up to a nine, so you can cover those numbers or eight and one, or just the nine, but it is smarter to get rid of the 1 first as it can be tricky to get it as you cover the others. Once you’ve covered the entire board, you scream it out and win. It is easy to follow and would be really great for kids who have trouble with math, and you could switch it up to subtraction and maybe even multiplication if you feel like getting really creative with it.

Three weeks after I came home, I introduced it to my four-year-old nephew, and he literally kicked my butt in three games. However, I will overlook the loses as he thoroughly enjoyed himself and to me that is even better than winning any game with him. Speaking of which, I will be doing a post about fun games to play during the holidays for Blogmas, so keep an eye out for that coming soon.

I was able to spend my birthday there, it wasn’t planned as I was supposed to come home that weekend, but my gal pals really wanted to throw me a party and I thought it was too sweet to tell them no, so after playing Bingo, we had a party and my mom, sister, Nolan and Kimber came out to help celebrate it. I heard the “happy birthday” song three times and by the second time, where everyone in the dining room sang to me, absolutely terrified me, because I don’t like being the center of attention at all. I felt very loved, which was their intention of course, but again, totally out of my element.

The last day I was there was bittersweet as it was nice. I had a lot of people trying to keep me there, but I needed to go home too. While I was there for four weeks, I had missed my dad (he did come to visit me), Rumer, and the cats. My cat Stormy became fairly sick before I left, he’s been really snotty and his allergies really took hold of him, so while I was gone, I kept getting updates from my parents on him, and I enjoyed the pictures my mom would send me, but my ultimate favorite was this one. He felt good enough to climb up to the back deck, which wasn’t something he could do before I left. My mom was so proud of him she opened the patio door and allowed him to enjoy his lunch on the kitchen rug. He now has a bit of a head tilt, but he seems to be doing better. He has been coming up and meowing to us whenever we call him.

November was chaotic in those first two weeks. I had a really heavy time of the month and then on top of that, I either contracted food poisoning or stomach flu. We think it might’ve been the latter since my mom was also affected by it too, although, she wasn’t too bad, I definitely made up for her that’s for sure! Once I was through with both of them, the month started to perk up a bit. We had to have Thanksgiving two days earlier than usual; my mom tends to work on Thanksgiving, so we try to have it on Black Friday, but we had a conflict with other schedules, so we had it on Wednesday.

While I was in the nursing home, I ended up starting and finishing two books I found there. I read Murder on The Orient Express by Agatha Christie and The Duchess by Danielle Steel (the review will go out on Wednesday!) and I still have my third book which is, The Aviator’s Wife by Melanie Benjamin. It is about Anne Morrow Lindburgh, who was the wife of Charles Lindburgh, but I actually haven’t been doing any reading lately, which is sad, but I read over 50 books this year so I’m not too mad about it honestly. I’m just not going to enjoy updating my stats on Wednesday because that is going to be a real bitch, but I think once I’m done with all of my blog work for the year, I will be able to get back into it again.

I have one more thing to say, since I wasn’t able to get everything done for my final installment of the “Garden Tour” I will be waiting until January to publish it. I am going into Blogmas content on Friday and will not have time to do anything with it for a while, so I just wanted to give you a heads up on it.

And now, I can finally give you the November playlist. If you would like to hear the rest of the playlist, click here

End Of The End by Blastoyz featuring Reality Test, UNSECRET and Krigare
Rise Up by 2WEI x Edda Hayes
Ghosts by Xandria
Hold Me, Help Me by Halocene
Vivien by Crosses
Wake The World by Epica featuring Phil Lanzon and Tommy Karevik
I Like It by Cardi B featuring Bad Bunny and J Balvin
Shut Down by BLACKPINK
Dark Sun by Ros Stephen x Power-Hus
Believer by Lea Michele
What A Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong
House On A Hill by Kamelot featuring Simone Simons

How was your November? What were you listening to?

Blogmas | The Christmas Day Tag!

Howdy!

I think every Blogmas I’ve done, I always have some kind of Christmas tag in the lineup. I’ve never planned on any of them, by the time the season rolls around, they just appear at the right time, so I just end up doing them anyways!

I found this one while on Twitter. A fellow blogger Nina posted her link through the many retweet accounts and it came up on my newsfeed. When I first read it, I quickly realized that I hadn’t done it before and that it was all about what goes on Christmas day. I thought it would be fun to kind of guess what’ll happen that day a few weeks in advance, and maybe I’ll find out everything I said in my answers was right. Sometimes I like placing bets on myself, keeps things entertaining on those boring gloomy days!

It is a tag, but I am opening it up to anyone who wants to do it. If you end up answering the questions below, I would like to read your posts! So, please link it back to me at the end, okay? Have fun!

What time do you wake up?

It varies with every year honestly, but it is always very early! I’m not saying we get up at like three or four in the morning–when I was little, my sister and I tried to make this happen on more than one occasion; it actually happened once, we were proud of ourselves!–but we tend to get up around sevenish. When my grandparents lived in town, this was our usual schedule: wake up at 7am, play for 10 minutes and then rush to get ready to go to nana and papaw’s by 8am. This might be the way, Blondie and Brandon do it this year, but I could be wrong.

Where will you be spending the day?

So, since we no longer go to my grandparent’s house, it’ll just be my immediate family gathering at our new house! I am actually really excited to celebrate it here, we were jipped last year but we want to make up for it.

What will you be wearing?

I have a really cute pajama set, they are white with little Cardinals sitting on tiny branches and red leaves. It is made of velvet, so they are comfy and warm – perfect for Christmas I think!

What games will you be playing?

We don’t really play any games, at least not with my parents. Nolan will probably play with his cars for the “short” time before we unwrap presents. I don’t think my parents, mainly my dad, to have my little nephew wait even five minutes to dig into the gifts under the tree! He’s always been awful about that, but he has turned into a big softie when it comes to him.

What will you be eating and drinking?

So, during Thanksgiving, my mom is the one that tends to do the bulk of the cooking but dad is in charge of the turkey and gravy. However, when it comes to Christmas, this is where he tends to shine the most. He loves making big Christmas breakfasts.

We usually have any way you take your eggs, bacon, fried potatoes, sausage and cinnamon rolls. Sometimes he makes me breakfast burritos or quesadilla, but if he doesn’t, my go-to is the potatoes with ketchup, plus two or three cinnamon rolls for good measure!

As far as beverages go, we never have anything fancy. Nolan will probably drink apple juice and the rest of us will have milk, which seems like the perfect breakfast to me.

What will you be watching?

Okay, since dad gets up pretty early to cook everything, he usually takes over the remote and turns it to TBS for the 24 hour broadcast of “A Christmas Story”. Here’s the funny thing about that, I haven’t watched it all the way through since I was in middle school!

Now, after all of the festivities die down a bit, I have a full afternoon of NBA basketball games. I like to think it’s a Christmas gift to myself because it’s usually all of the teams I normally watch during the season playing on that day. Last year, I only missed one game, because I was so exhausted and because the Lakers were having an awful bout of games, I figured I wasn’t going to miss much and I think I was right too. I might end up recording them all and watch at my own time, but who knows!

What do you hope to find under the tree on Christmas Day?

You’re allowed to laugh at this answer, but I haven’t really asked for much this year. My mom said she has gotten me something that will be signed “From Santa Claus” on Christmas day, but the only thing I really hope to see is a giant pillow.

I sleep with three pillows at the moment! I have my childhood pillow down at the bottom because I can’t get rid of it for the life of me, plus two extra ones I’ve had to include because of my neck. So, I am hoping for one, hard, giant pillow to solve all of my problems.

Who will you be spending day with?

I am spending the day with my parents, Blondie, Brandon, Nolan and our dog ChiChi (and yes, she has a stocking and is getting her own gifts!). I feel like it could be chaotic because of the excitement in general, but since Nolan is walking now, we can’t just place him in his high chair and have him unwrap his presents there. I have a feeling, he’ll be attempting to help everyone with their gifts!

When will you be opening your presents?

It’ll depend on whether or not we eat breakfast first, but like I said, I don’t think it’ll take my nephew long to convince papaw that we need to do this first, but you never know – although when it comes to these two, I’m hardly ever wrong!

Dear Papaw III

Dear Papaw,

Tomorrow marks three years you’ve been gone. It may have been years, but it honestly still feels like yesterday. The whole week before and the days that came after play on a loop in my head. Originally, I had a totally different way about how I wanted this letter to go, but I’ve never wanted these to be too snappy. You wouldn’t have liked that anyways. I miss you a lot, even if some people don’t think I do. I think of you whenever I watch basketball, and I often wonder what you’d think of my knowledge about it and the four professional teams I watch on a daily basis. I think you’d be like dad and hate on the Lakers because of LeBron. I don’t blame you. I don’t care for him being on the team either. I wonder if you’d like the Rockets though since they’re the ones I seem to watch and root for the most of course! I understand why you didn’t like it because of how many attempts a player will take to shoot the ball and the whole scoring process, I’m still not understanding that part yet, but I’m slowly getting there.

On the day I wrote this letter, I went looking for a picture for the banner. I was going to attempt to find one of “Alex” with your old Butler shirt but then I found an album that nana made for us in the family to share memories and old photos, and I found one dedicated to you. I had array of pictures to choose from, but once I saw this one, I knew I had to use it. You’re wearing a Butler shirt and if you’ve been watching them from heaven, you know they’re in a desperate need of a miracle, getting through the Big East tournament and March Madness, which will all probably be over with by the time this post goes out, but you know!

I always thought it was funny how Rick would continue to buy you a Butler shirt for your birthday or Christmas and you’d wear it once maybe and then stuff it back in the closet. You were pretty consistent with your fashion in your old age. We all thought you looked adorable in anything you wore, even if you had food spills down your shirt and pants, we didn’t care. We laughed at you, and apparently you’ve been getting back at us for doing so, because we all tend to spill our food on our shirts a lot more than we usually do.

We are all in agreement that you visit little Nolan. Em posted a video of him reaching up to an invisible spirit; it gave me goosebumps! He is so smart! He actually reminds me of you in the fact that you wouldn’t really flaunt your smarts, sorry, I couldn’t think of a better word there! I think you would have loved him dearly. Now, if you can talk ChiChi into letting him pet her easier, that would be nice. He is so curious about his surroundings, and ChiChi is the only animal that is afraid of him. Honestly, if you saw him in his walker or “car” as we call it, you’d be terrified too! The best way to compare the experience is a four year old me racing around the house in my wheelchair!

Hope you are enjoying yourself wherever you are, and watch over all of us down here too, not just the youngsters. We’re still a quirky bunch but we all need an angel at our side sometimes. Although, I feel like you’d be like a bit of a jokester still, so be good too. You don’t want to get on God’s bad side! So no pranks with some of your friends up there. You told me way too many stories of you growing up with them to know that you all can get into some mischief. Anyways, I love you.

Your granddaughter,
Meg-han.

Blogmas | Christmas Decor Ideas

Howdy!

Merry Christmas Eve!

For this post, I wanted to discuss some of my early Christmas decor ideas for 2019! Yeah, I know I’m going backwards for this, but there’s a reason for it. We recently got a new house, and I’ve been trying to figure out how I want everything arranged in my new bedroom. We have an idea of where the bed and TV will be placed, but everything else is a bit up in the air right now. So, I only have a blurry video imprint in my mind of what it looks like and how I’d like for everything to go!

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Whenever we’d move to a different house, my room has always had white walls. After so many years, it can get very boring looking and you just feel like you need a change and what I do is add as many posters as I possibly can! I even have some of my old artwork hanging up in my current room as well, and despite the fact that it makes the room more lively, it can still look pretty plain.

Over the years, I’ve wanted to decorate the crap out of my room for various holidays–mostly for Halloween and Christmas! A recent dream of mine is that I’ve been wanting to get a Christmas tree for my bedroom. I think I might be watching Zoe Sugg’s vlogmases a little too much because she makes me want to do stuff that I wouldn’t normally do! A part of me is torn between if this is a good or bad thing!

This month I’ve been inspired to create a Pinterest board of what I like about Christmas, the pines of the trees, bright glitter-y snow, and apparently the color red in all its glory! Later on in the year I’ll be posting some of my favorite ornaments and that’ll just add to my personality, because as most of you know, I’m a very eclectic person with many, many interests. Anyways, if you’d like to check it out, click here!

I’d like a semi-tall tree, I’m thinking maybe a 4′ tree so that I can put it up and take it down by myself. I can already picture explaining that to my parents! I originally wanted a normal looking tree, but after scrolling through my Facebook last week, a friend shared an article about the newest trend of black Christmas trees! After seeing this, I suddenly wanted one and thought that big royal purple ornaments with white snowflakes would be so pretty! I think I’d feel happy about not only myself but my new surroundings of being able to have that freedom that comes with decorating, you know?

So what about you? Do you wish you had an extra room where you could decorate it to the way you want it to, without having any judgement from others? 

Blogmas | Routine Or Nostalgic?

Howdy!

Last year I was heavily inspired by one of my Facebook friends Lori, to create both this post and last week’s about the Christmas movies I haven’t seen yet. For this one, I got the idea to write about it after she posted a status about whether or not she and her husband should put up their Christmas tree. The reason why she asked is because both of her children are older now and the eldest doesn’t even live with them anymore. So, she posed the question are putting up Christmas trees part of the holiday routine or wanting to be nostalgic?

When Blondie began to date Brandon, our parents really started to wonder if it would be worth it to put ours up too. Despite the fact that I am still living in the family home, my mom still suggested the idea of just forgoing the big tree and using my little purple tree instead. I ended up getting very angry with my parents about this and they decided to invite the two goofballs, who now usually have their tree up a day or two after Thanksgiving, over to get the 20 year old tree up and decorated in our living room.

I think at that point of time, it was a bit of a routine. My mom always likes to complain that since we only have it up for like two weeks, she’s the one taking it all down in the end. I think my nana can vouch for me when I say that I could help her taking down Christmas trees, since the last tree she had, we took down like three months after we probably should have, and nobody fell out of their wheelchairs or hurt themselves either!

While I was growing up, my grandparents always put up their tree, even though they relativity lived alone. I mean, their dog Casey would knock it down every once in a while, but it would go up on Black Friday and most times it would be taken down by the end of the first week of January. They absolutely loved having their tree up. I remember hearing a story that papaw would stop in his wheelchair and just look up at it in the middle of the day. It always brought out a lot of memories; some of the ornaments were originally the aunts, we had his favorite lights and tinsel draped around it as well. After he died, my nana didn’t stop putting it up because she was the only one there. She knew that the family would be there for that day in some form and it would be worth it in the end.

I’m glad that my parents never stopped putting it up, I love looking at it when it’s lit in those rainbow colors. The sparkles are hypnotizing. I never like getting stabbed by the branches but I love putting the family “relics” at the end of each one. And this year, we have a new member that gets to be a part of the chaos. Little Nolan watched his mommy and daddy put up theirs, and I think he’ll enjoy being close to the mess and you know mom will want to get a couple of pictures of him under the Christmas tree too!

I don’t think it matters if you live alone or have a whole house full of people, you should have some kind of tree up. Everybody deserves to feel festive in some way and to me, this is what usually does the trick.

What about you, do you put up some kind of Christmas tree in your house, apartment, or even dorm room? Do you think it’s part of our routine of the coming season? Or do you think we have them to feel nostalgic?