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?

Top 8 Spooky Films!

Hello!

You can tell I haven’t done on these posts in a while, mainly because I had forgotten how to actually start it. Oops!

I’m also talking about a different subject too, I normally don’t talk about “spooky” things, especially in the month of October. I mentioned in my recent review for Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wall-Paper” last week that even though I love the occasional vampire, witch and werewolf subgenres, I am still very tame when it comes to anything in the “horror” category. To be perfectly honest with you, none of these films are too over the top, at least from my standpoint–you might have another point of view and that’s fine and dandy. We all have our limits for this time of the year and if you’re interested in boarding your horizons a bit, I think you should consider the list below.

Now, shall we?

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Before we start, I wanted to give you a level to go with each movie in the hopes to help you see how “creepy” it is, so imagine that number one is the safest whereas 10 is not only the highest but frightening on the whole thing, but as you get to five, you’ve hit a good medium between those feelings, okay?

The Gift (2000)

One of the first movies I was suggested to watch was The Gift. When you have both of your parents telling you to check it out, that is usually a good candidate, especially in the psychological section. For the most part, that’s what I’d say about all of these films but this one was different because it still has some of my usual themes within it.

The Gift is about a woman who is known to be a little out there. She is more of a healer than a witch, but now she is starting to have visions of another woman who is mysteriously missing, and she is haunted by this girl and feels certain that she is dead. It stars Cate Blanchett, Katie Holmes, and Keanu Reeves in very strong roles. Despite for some intense scenes, I’d still give it a 6 1/2 on the “creepy” scale.

What Lies Beneath (2000)

Now with this film, I was told to watch it for basically two years; at one point my mom was watching it in the living room, and I was slightly intrigued by the start of it. A few days later I decided to actually watch it and even though I thought it was really good, that doesn’t mean I’ll be watching it for a while. I would definitely put it at an eight, because of a scene that shows a Ouija board. I hate those things and that scene almost made me run for the hills!

The Prodigy (2019)

This one is very interesting because it focuses on a reincarnation outlook with some creepy stuff involved as we follow a couple on the quest on having a baby and on the day their child is born, a serial killer is also taking his last breaths at the same hospital! When the killer realizes this, he gets to recreate his life in the eyes of this little boy.

In my defense, the first time I ever saw the trailer, I didn’t think it looked too bad, I thought in a way, it would be like The Gift in a more modern way, and I was so totally wrong! This freaked me out more than I thought it would, but I will also say that I thought it was really interesting too. I liked it for those moments, but that means it belongs higher on my scale, so I’d say it’s an eight or nine. However, I do have an alternative for you. If you are interested in reincarnation or a “Freaky Friday” kind of scare, I think “Freaky” with Vince Vaughan and Kathryn Newton would be a more comic and safer idea instead.

Fantasy Island (2019)

A little bit after I completed The Prodigy, I actually noticed a change in myself and I definitely wanted more psychological thrillers, nothing like Final Destination or Saw (although I do want to check out “Spiral” soon!) and I always seemed to watch their trailers first, but as we’ve found out with the last one, I don’t know if going about it this way is a good thing in general.

When I suggested this to my dad, he made it apparent to me that there could be an older version of this film, I know there is/was a TV show on FOX with Rosalyn Sanchez last year, but I was never able to check it out in time. Anyways, this movie was actually lighthearted in the beginning, but you knew shit was going to hit the fan sometime. It had a nice balance of “oh, this is fine” to “here we go” and ultimately “oh damn!” but I enjoyed myself all the same. I’d give it a solid six, mainly because of the events happening at the end.

Escape Room (2019)

I’ve heard about these damn escape rooms all the time. I first heard about them while watching an episode of Jeopardy! and I thought why in the world would anyone want to lock themselves with a bunch of random people in the hopes to finding a series of keys to get out of there. I mean, I barely wanted to work in groups with people I know because I can do things easier on my own!

And then I decided to watch this sucker and was sucked into it immediately, but since this was a movie, the rules can change, and your outcome can have some deadly consequences. I truly loved this movie, like I am patiently waiting for the day the second shows up on my guide for Starz (because that’s where the other premiered on!). If you would like another film like this, try to search for Play Or Die. This one has more British actors in it so the accents are heightened and the plot for the main character is more mysterious.

Crawl (2019)

I feel really bad for adding this to this list after the lower half of the States are recovering after the damage of Hurricane Ian in Florida, Puerto Rico and others as we speak, but this was a creepy but realistic take that most of us would not think about but probably should afterwards.

This film follows a father, daughter duo getting stuck in the midst of an intense hurricane and their home is infested with massive and hungry crocodiles. If you thought sharks were bad, this will show you to fear these beasts even more! As the characters are trying to escape, they try not to tempt monsters hiding in the water. As someone who hasn’t watched Jaws, I’d give this movie a big 10 because evetime you believe it’s done, all hell breaks loose for the characters.

Old (2020)

This year, I had decided on two movies I desperately wanted to see and luckily, they appeared on HBOMax. I was a happy camper, and the first was M. Night Shyamalan’s Old. I saw the trailer and knew from experience that when dealing with Shyamalan’s work, it would be slightly horrifying! However, it didn’t stop me from watching it.

Old is about a group of people who come to this resort, and they are each invited to visit a beach with beautiful views and relaxing atmosphere, which is true, but there is a bad side to it too. They get their first clue when they find a woman dead on the shore and it looks like she’d been there for a very, long time but hasn’t. In a matter of five hours, each of the residents become older and lose a number of things in the process, their eyesight, memory, beauty, and one of the children becomes an adult, gives birth right there in front of her parents.

This movie was right up my alley, but it also seemed too weird, and I didn’t particular enjoy the ending of it either. I would give it a good seven out of ten because there were a lot of freaky moments–obviously! Now if you’d ask me on general enjoyment, I’d tell you it was a four.

Last Night In Soho (2021)

After I had watched Old, I was a bit skeptic on how Last Night In Soho would turn out for me. The main reason why I had wanted to see it was because stars Thomasin McKenzie (who was also in Old!) and Anya Taylor-Johnson (who was in M. Night Shamalyan’s Split!) and Matt Smith. I had found it just before House of the Dragon would start and I wanted to get a sense of Matt’s work before it had premiered a couple of months later.

My thoughts on Last Night In Soho are completely different to Old; I actually loved it so much that I told my parents it was one of the best films I’d seen in a while. I would actually put it on the same list I put Murder On the Orient Express. It was that amazing!

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Honestly, this is a pretty hefty list with a lot of different options. I’ve done other movies lists in the past, I’ve even done a few Halloween-y posts a couple of years ago, so it’s nice to update what I’ve enjoyed since then and let you test your waters in the near future.

Which film(s) are you thinking about checking out soon? Do you have any others that fit well with this list that I might enjoy too? Let me know in the comments below!

Book Review: “The Yellow Wall-Paper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Hello there!

In a way to get me ready for fall and of course, Halloween, I wanted to find something that would reflect my mood and I thought my favorite thrillers. Now, I am not a very big fan of horror despite my love for vampires, witches and werewolves, but I do enjoy a good psychological thriller here and there.

I thought it was Victoria Helen Stone’s Jane Doe that got me interested in this genre, but then I started to remember when I was in high school, and I took two separate classes for each semester and the first was Novels where my interest in the genre was tested as we read Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and Helter Skelter by Curt Gentry and Vincent Bugliosi. However, it wasn’t until I went into Short Stories that I was introduced to Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s classic The Yellow Wall–Paper and this really made me realize that this was only the beginning.

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A woman and her husband rent a summer house, but what should be a restful getaway turns into a suffocating psychological battle. This chilling account of postpartum depression and a husband’s controlling behavior in the guise of treatment will leave you breathless. 

taken from Goodreads.

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When I finally decided that I would re-read this story, I did it for a specfic reasons: I didn’t exactly remember how it ended, all I could figure out was that it creeped me out. Fast forward, I wasn’t wrong with my initial rememberance but things that wouldn’t make sense to me at that time of the first read; I knew of very little history about how women were treated in that timeframe, so by the time I had went back to it, I had the knowledge to back everything up in my brain.

Our main character Jane is forced to stay indoors and recover from a fit of “nervousness” as she calls it, and if the word “baby” didn’t turn up in a sentence later, we wouldn’t know it’s actually name as we call it postpartum depression. For her and other women of that time, it had another name completely “hysteria” and it wasn’t the best diagnosis for a woman as there is evidence (and lots of it!) towards how husbands, sons, brothers, and doctors put various women and girls in asylums for their overwhelming feelings in the 19th Century.

“It is the strangest yellow, that wallpaper! It makes me think of all the yellow things I ever saw – not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things.”

Jane is unique though as her husband is a physician and he seems to love her enough, to support her in this condition at home. So, she is forced to recover in the master bedroom of their rental mansion, where it has decaying yellow wallpaper everywhere. Jane absolutely hates it. I understand her frustrations about it though, as I had purchased a pillow and sheet set that showed the color yellow to be as bright as the sun, but then we unwrapped it and found that the pillowcase fits the description to a T, but the sheet itself does not. It is so light that if nobody knew I had a brown mattress underneath, they certainly would as soon as they walked into my room… Anywho, like one does when they cannot explore freely, Jane starts to notice various things like the odd patterns and the disturbing figure that seems to appear at night.

Despite its small size, it definitely packs a punch worthy of a regular novel. I mean, as much as I love Frankenstein, my drive towards this book was stronger, and that’s saying something!

For anyone out there who is not too interested in horror, I highly suggest giving this story a shot before the end of the month. Although, if you feel comfortable waiting until after the Halloween festivities then by all means wait it out, but trust me when I say, you may end up enjoying it more than you think and want more like it afterwards, so as a nice warning, be sure to prepare yourselves!

Have you read Charlotte’s “The Yellow Wall-Paper” before? If your answer is yes, how did you come across it? I’d also like to know what you thought about it the first time you read it. Please tell me everything in the comments below!

Recent Additions To | Halloween Playlist

Hello 😉

In 2019, I had felt guilty I didn’t do this after I had signed up for Spotify several years ago, I finally created a Halloween playlist. I had hoped it would be more of an aesthetic pleasing to both the traditionists out there that enjoy the classics like “Monster Mash and the original version of “Thriller” by the legendary Michael Jackson, and for anyone like myself finding modern hits that could pass for the season. Once it became October, I immediately wanted to revamp it with songs I’ve been listening to for the past three years.

So, this post is all about the music I’ve found and we’re going to discuss some of my ultimate favorites here and there.

A type of mood or vibe I go about looking for awesome candidates.

I am a lover of darker tones when it comes to music in general. It doesn’t have to be autumn or Halloween for that matter to generate that type of vibe for me because I want it all the time.

This didn’t exactly happen for me until I found a collection of artists in their early days of releasing music; now when it comes to the type of music BANKS and Ruelle releases, they’ve barely changed since their first singles, and usually that’s not like me because I love the evolution musicians tend to do after doing the same for so long, and you can thank Linkin Park for that by the way!

For these women though, I just can’t let it go and they continue to give us as fans, more and more, and I just consume all of it. Unfortunately, I saw Laurel and Zella Day make that switch fairly after their first albums/EPs were out to the public and a part of me was very sad, but I can learn to enjoy these new changes and search for more devoted to that certain style I was drawn to in the first place.

Heavy metal, hard rock and a tiny bit of grunge…

As you finish with the classics, you start to notice a pattern because instead of hearing straight pop music or songs you think belong in a playlist like this and you instantly move onto the melodramatic beats and vicious screams. In the beginning, I wanted an even mixture, but it quickly became a mess after a while because I couldn’t hold myself back any longer.

The one thing I have never enjoy is music like grunge, but I find it absolutely perfect for Halloween!

Back to Linkin Park and I was never a fan of their grunge-y album, that had a slight nod to the nu metal fanbase that most of us fell in love in the first place. The album in question is “The Hunting Party” that was released in 2014. I will say, it is rightly titled for this time of the year! Anyways, this is one of three albums LP ever made that I didn’t really enjoy that much but I tend to have a craving for it by the end of October. I don’t know why it happens, but it is consistent, and I’ve learned to live with it.

If it was featured on a recent film and/or TV show, or just a freaking ad for a product, I’ll find it.

I am NOT sorry to admit this, but I actually enjoyed the first Suicide Squad film–actually, both my dad and former brother-in-law are in agreement with me about it. They also liked Ben Affleck as Batman too, but let’s not get too sidetracked here, and let’s talk about the soundtrack. I really love “Purple Lamborghini” with Rick Ross and Skrillex, but I’ve never thought of it as “Halloween-y.” but like many others, I’d put Twenty-One Pilots’ “Heathens” on the list in a damn heartbeat. It took me a bit longer to add “Sucka 4 Pain” with Logic, Lil Wayne, Quavo,

Two of my absolute favorite tracks to date that I will listen to all year long but instantly be drawn back to the first season of The Chilling Adventures to Sabrina on Netflix is, “Black Mad Woman” by VCTRYS and “A Little Wicked” by Valerie Broussard, which plays during the end of the last episode where Sabrina becomes a bit of a bad b(w)itch and her hair goes from a natural blonde color to platinum and her whole swagger just changes in those final scenes and I just adore them!

Here are some of the most recent additions to the actual playlist.

Sweet But Psycho by Ava Max
Mad Hatter by Melanie Martinez
Lurk by The Neighbourhood
Diseased by Icon for Hire
Wish You Hell by Like A Storm
Red Cold River by Breaking Benjamin
Spellbound by Lacuna Coil
Bloodmoney by Poppy
Halloweenie: IV: Innards by Ashnikko
Come Little Children by Clovet Mae
Dead Man Walking by Jelly Roll
Yikes by Nicki Minaj
Like A Villain by Bad Omens
Zombified by Falling In Reverse
Sweet Revenge by Kat Leon featuring Jo Blankenburg
Burn by 2WEI with Edda Hayes
I Did Something Bad by Taylor Swift
Man or a Monster by Sam Tinnesz featuring Zayde Wolf
To The Hellfire by Lorna Shore
Pink Venom by BLACKPINK

If you would like to check out the whole Halloween playlist, click here to be transported to a new window and you can listen to your favorites and maybe you find some brand-new tunes along the way. Before you go, how about you tell me about your absolute favorite song for Halloween in the comments below.

October Playlist 👻🖤

Hello!

It is FINALLY the week of Halloween!

I’ve been looking forward to the holiday since July but you would never know it if you saw my room right now. I only put out my plaid pumpkins around my window like last year, and mom managed to hang up the wreath that Rumer did nothing but bark at throughout the month of August. Thankfully Rumer doesn’t have a glue about it so we’ve been enjoying the quiet there. I’d still like to get another one for Christmas/winter with lights on it but I fear that’ll just provoke her so I’ll have to find something else…

Since we’re discussing festive music, I thought I’d let you know that I have updated my ultimate Halloween playlist I created about two years ago. It still has all of the classics but I have also tried to save anything I share on my Insta too, just in case you can’t check those out because you don’t have an account. If you’d like to take a listen to my favorites lately, click here I would also like to add that I did not forget about my promise about including my September playlist too! .

Here are my Top 25 songs for October, and if you are curious to see what else I got into, here is your final link of the post.

This Fire Inside by NerdOur featuring Halocene
Invincible by Saysh x Anderson Rocio
Legend by Holy Wars
Get Better by Leslie Mosier
This Town by ELLA EX
Queen by Hidden Citizens featuring Ranya
Ain’t My Fault by Zara Larsson
Let Me Love You by Love and Death featuring Lacey Sturm
Whose Side Are You On by Tommee Profitt featuring Ruelle
Parachaute by Saint Chaos
Rebel by Pep Squad
God Only Knowns by for KING & COUNTRY featuring Echosmith
Show Yourself by Idina Menzel and Evan Rachel Wood
Down by The Birthday Massacre
Wicked Game by Violet Orlandi
Crawl Back In by Dead By Sunrise
Everybody Hurts by Avril Lavigne
Somebody Else by VERITE
Does He Love You by Reba McEntire featuring Dolly Parton
Dead Inside by Nita Struass featuring David Draiman
Emily by James Arthur
Friday by Jeris Johnson featuring Trippie Redd
No Rest For The Wicked by Lykke Li
How Soon Is Noe by AG x Dressage
Gravedigger by MXMS

One thing I have been really enjoying is sharing my “Halloween Inspired” theme of ‘Song of the Day’ on Instagram’s stories in the evenings. It is the only thing I was able to keep up with throughout the entire month as the others failed fairly quickly!

I try to change it up every other day with various backgrounds and of course the music too. We started off with Ice Nine Kills’ new track featuring Jacoby Shaddix of Papa Roach “Hip To Be Scared” as I felt like it was a great way to start off the spooky season. The band itself is really interesting, they are definitely a metalcore type of band but like to muddle with other subgenres like my ultimate favorite: symphonic metal. I love anyone who is different from the rest and what I love about this band is that, they focus on horror films. All of the elements of those amazing, cult-like, movies like American Psycho, Halloween, etc. They recently released their newest album: “Welcome to Horrorwood: The Silver Scream 2” which is totally awesome, you should definitely check it out before the month is over.

What were your listening to this month?