A-Z Disability Challenge | Q&A

Howdy!

This post wasn’t really prepared the best. When I officially decided this was what I was going to do, I was overcome with dread because whenever I ask for questions like this, I don’t get anything on anything! This was the case for both Twitter and Instagram (which I figured!) but surprisingly on Facebook I got several interesting ones! They were only from two people but at least they gave me something for this post!

Questions Asked By Brittany:

How many people have you ran over with your wheelchair?

Since I’ve had three of them at different times in my life, I figured it was only right to do an estimate for all of them! Unfortunately, I actually haven’t used my red one a lot, so for once it’s at zero! I feel like once we have a porch and I can freely go places with it, that number will increase but hopefully not as much as the previous chairs because that is just embarrassing!

I was around four years old when I received my first wheelchair, “the purple one” as my family calls it. I used it for the majority of my childhood, until the age of 14 I think. So, I feel like the number is pretty big because I was a sassy little thing and loved to run people over. I’m thinking it might be over 30-40 people. The second was the ugly hot pink chair, which I had from the age 14 to 27, I don’t feel like I ran over a ton more but I feel like it’s no more than 30 people, because once I was out of school, I didn’t like doing it anymore.

How many times have you fallen out of your wheelchair?

Thankfully I have never fallen out of my power chairs before, but with these manual wheelchairs, it’s a totally different story! The chair with the most falls is one I like to call “death trap” because of the amount of times it’s not only scared me, but others who have had watch me fall out of it. Since last February I don’t use it as much unless I am getting my hair washed. Unfortunately, my dad and I can’t throw it into the dumpster yet!

Oh, and I have fallen out of it four or five times! The last few were semi-controlled, as my mom was in the process of transferring me but the brakes never locked so it would roll back a little if you weren’t careful!

Your favorite memory?

This is so difficult to answer because I have a lot of favorite memories, but the two that jumped out at me won out. The first one was of my sister and I being outside at our grandparent’s house when we were little and one of our favorite things to do at the time was dig in the dirt by the porch. For some reason our spot was always by the big tree and one day while we were digging for treasure that came with killing invaders by the technical names of ants and worms, we found this white thing. We seriously thought it was treasure until my nana pointed out that was part of the water sewer pipe to the house. After the discovery we were told to cover it back up and pick another spot. Unfortunately, we were never as lucky in other places as that one!

The next memory is a special one because in my family, we are mostly known for our eating and laughter, but one time while my Aunt Laurie and cousins Amy and Taylor came down from up north, we managed to get everyone involved with playing Frisbee. This had never happened before, but everybody but nana and I went out into the big part of the yard to toss the Frisbee back and forth to each other. It was so much fun to watch everyone risk life and limb basically to never letting it hit the ground! The only reason we stopped was because somebody got a little overzealous and threw it up a little high and it landed on top of the house!

What did you eat for breakfast? 

This was one of the most random question but I can’t leave it out, so I had a bowl of Cocoa Pebbles with a small amount of milk on top, along with a cup of milk with it too.

Questions Asked By Christine

Is there at least one or two inventions you wish you could have that made your life easier?

You know, I am always thinking of things of little inventions–it’s part of being half of my dad because he use to fix houses years ago, but I mostly try to come up with things that I can use around the house.

For example, I have this foam box that my nana got with her Meals On Wheels once a week a few years ago, and we kept two of them after realizing they were the perfect height and light enough to move around for me while in the wheelchair or on the bed. Ever since I have had thoughts about how to make this better, with using something I remember seeing in school, but I have always had hard time explaining the visions in my head so that’s why the majority of the stuff that I think about, stays in the back of my head!

Do you have the high and low of your experience(s) and how do you handle it?

I think everyone has experienced the highs and lows of things, especially ones you have no control over. You usually feel like everything is working against you, but I have learned that everything happens for a reason and God will guide you away or to things that may not make sense at the time but later will be a learning curve for you.

For the past two years, I have been using the “going with the flow” method and it has helped me out a lot with things like overthinking and the feeling of rejection. I think the best thing to remember when things don’t work out, it doesn’t mean that opportunity will never come knocking again. You just may not be ready for it right now. I have always said that I would never write for magazines but I have, because I found several places that talk about subjects that are close to me and that made me change my mind about doing it in the first place!

I hope you have enjoyed the post today and material given by both Brittany and Christine, and I want to say thank you to both of them for sending me really fun and interesting questions. If you have any more for me, leave a comment down below and I will try my best to get back to you soon!

Weekend Fun!

Howdy!

I think it’s fair to say I had fun over the weekend! My mom and dad went out for a late birthday lunch as it was my mom’s birthday last week. So I got to spend time with my grandparents. Whenever I go over there, my nana usually has me doing little jobs for her that I know how to do on your laptop or little ones around the house. I was trying to grab the handy mini can opener for the pop can and she’s been letting me use this at her house, as soon as I got my toes around in the box she had already opened it. It was like beat the clock and I had failed once again. It was also lunch time when I go over there too, so I eat a can of soup or sometimes I do what I did that day, just eat cottage cheese and ice cream. Sometimes if I have a lot to say, it’s better to eat less!

When my mom first pushed me into the kitchen, I saw that they had gotten two new Archaeology Magazines. The week before they got the newest edition but I guess the two that we missed came in too! I’ll read the bigger articles whenever I go back if papaw hasn’t hidden them away somewhere. There’s a section inside these magazines that I’ve just fallen in love with, it’s two pages and on them is a picture of the globe and they have little information from different countries. Sometimes they can be really interesting and the rest of the time they’re a little gross! The main thing I like to do, well my nana has me do, I like to read them out loud. I’ve always been the slower reader in school and of all magazines to read out loud, it’s this type of magazine! Imagine all of these big ass words! I’m getting less frustrated with them though, before I just wanted to cry whenever I got up to these words now I make a joke out of them and it makes the both of us laugh. I’ve found its less pressure if I can make people laugh in the middle of reading these articles.

While I was busy hanging out with my grandparents, my parents went out to Red Lobster and to the store. The first ever alcohol drinks she ever got me to like were these Strawberry Daiquiri slushies. I liked them at first but since I just slip them the icy parts melt too fast for me and it no longer tastes any good! Well, two summers ago my friend Sammy had this Baha Mama slushie drink and I had a spoonful and man was it good! It hardly had a burn to it. The funny part of the story was I didn’t know my mom was planning on drinking that night so when they went to grab stuff and saw these my dad went “which one of these does Meghan like?” So it was his idea (and he admitted to it!) and now have two left over. She had two out of her three already! That was first drink since NYE. I got to see Sammy, Chey, and Chevy too! Chey went to her first concert ever over the weekend. I was pretty proud of her!

On Sunday, my day was a bit duller. I knew we were going over to the garage for our Sunday dinner, but my mom wanted to take a nap beforehand and while I was bored waiting to go over, I started writing out bands that I listen to because towards the end of the night John and a friend our neighbors kept asking me what kind of bands I normally listen to, so I thought I’d do myself a bit of good and write out. I listed 42 on this note card. 41 were on my iPod, one wasn’t but it’s on my Spotify I don’t know how I managed to remember it! When I woke up that morning, it was like 10am and my mom gave me cereal for breakfast, normally I don’t like to eat first thing in the morning. I have to be in the mood for it or if it is chocolate related! By the time we left to go over to eat, I was past hungry.  John made steak, red potatoes, salmon and corn on the cobb. In other words, we ate like kings! I stayed sober this time around even though dad let me have a sip of his tomato beer, just tomato juice and a bud light. It was disgusting! My mom and I were surprised he let me take a sip of his beer! We didn’t stay over very long this time around as my mom had to get up early for work in the morning.

When we left, I wanted to go around the backyard and see the babies. This past weekend, I got to see them more than I usually do since they’re really not supposed to be inside. I started off by spending some with Tubby, since he’s the keeper of the porch now. He loves to be around people or around my mom, Blondie and I. He likes to give hugs and purrs the whole time. The others are another story entirely. Bootsie, Grumpy, Bear-Bear, Midget, and Stormy are all used to my big wheelchair. The little ones are not as they still run away from me. When I went in the back after being with Tubby, they were all a little spooked when I came towards them. They didn’t start coming around me until Midget and Bootsie came up first and then they rushed behind. I tried to take pictures of them but they kept moving away as soon as I would take a picture. Surprisingly I didn’t have a bad time dealing with the mosquitos like I thought I would, but I also didn’t want to test it out by staying out longer either.

My mom let me wear my British flag shirt. I got it for Christmas but the neckline is way too long for me, but whenever we go places I want to wear it so she put it on me and we had to use a safety pin to fix the excess so it didn’t slide off my shoulders and show more cleavage than it needed to! I don’t have white plain pants, except for these capris that have mini colored hearts on them. So that is what I wore over to my nana;s, later on that night my mom changed my shirt to my Captain America shirt so I wouldn’t have to worry about the damn safety pin. The first thing my neighbor told me when I got done parking, he wants to get a pair of pants like mine. Two days later the image of him with the pants on were stuck in my head. Not a pretty picture I have to say!

On Sunday, I wore my new skull T-shirt I got from Wal-Mart a few months ago. My nana had to fix the neckline as it was way too long in the front and revealed more than it needed to! It’s tight around my stomach so I don’t see my dad putting it on me very much as he hates tight shirts on me. Not as a parent thing, as he thinks being that tight I’ll only wear a few times before it becomes too small for me! I no longer judge my clothes that way as I still have a shirt that I got in 2006-07 from church and it STILL fits me! It’s not tight in my stomach area, but it around getting my arms into the sleeves. I have maybe another year or two left on wearing it. As far as pants, my mom put me in gray shorts but I wanted to wear pants as I knew where I would be sitting, it would be cold. I was right but she brought over her long/knee high fuzzy socks for me to wear! Those are so nice! I’m proud to say I can put those on as well!

DIY: The Weird Backdrop

So my nana has officially started on our pumpkins and that’s not all!

I’ve decided to save the pumpkin post until the weekend. I’ve been interested in finding great backdrops for certain things to make the post stand out. I’ve seen so many people use blankets, table cloths, etc as their backdrop. Different fabrics do work amazing, but I’ve also seen quite a few people use other stuff to make whatever they may talk about in that actual post give it some texture, I’ve seen bloggers use marbles, flowers, and candles. Both ways are fantastic and bring out a very cozy feeling to the post. A few months ago, I started taking pictures of different objects and I noticed that I was very limited on backdrops. I did have this very cool and rocker chic fabric that our neighbor gave me one day earlier this year, but somehow I’ve manged to lose it. I can’t use my sheet because of the lighting and my phone. That’s why I’ve been showing you everything with a notebook behind it.

This was so easy to do and there’s a big chance that you have everything on hand already! I’ve done collages before, but I’ve actually never done one were I’ve left and loved it. When I was in high school, for my senior year I had to do a collage of pictures, I made two. I made one for me that ended up being ruined after we rolled it up. I made the other for my nana, it’s a full collage of Adam Lambert. She loved it! Still does! Both of those collages weren’t as “neat” as this one though, my inner OCD played a big part in this today, so everything had to match up together. In a nutshell, everything on this cardboard is everything I like. If I can find a music magazine sometime soon, I might actually do the back side too. I can’t wait to start using this for my book reviews and for other things in the future!

Recently, I found a blogger with a very unique way to make your own backdrop for photos. I’ve been keeping it very close to my heart and even showed it to my nana, she liked the idea and thought it would be interesting to make. Since she likes my blog anyway, she’ll be happy to do something for it. Luckily for the both of us, we had everything on hand that we would have needed for the actual project. Before I go into the directions of how we made it, I thought I’d include the link of the other blogger who originally made it and inspired me to do it for myself. Chroma Me Silly was the blogger I got the idea from and when I discovered on how easy it looked, I immediately wanted to do it. One day I actually told her that I wanted to do it on Twitter, so I hope I’ve made her proud on actually finishing it. Everything is mostly the same as hers, but I didn’t use fashion magazines. I was originally going to but I didn’t find anything that caught my eye to put on my cardboard. I bet you’re getting tired of me talking about the fact I got a Country Living magazine over the weekend and I don’t blame you, I’m so sorry! This magazine gave me two ideas, first the pumpkins, and then I saw the vintage phones…

What We Used: 

• A large sheet of cardboard, I basically recycled the sheet that came with the neon pieces of paper that my sister got to decorated the back of our doors.
• I used weird pictures (of course!) CL magazine had a section of “collections” and it was about vintage phones. I was regretting I didn’t buy a second copy, we used different pages of the magazine too, such as a side of lightly decorated bed and lastly half an arm of a Halloween section in the back.
• When we finally established which sections was going to be used, my nana cut them out and took out the excess off. I was actually supposed to do this part but we kept talking while she was doing this and I guess we both forgot about it.
• My nana has a big tub of glue, we used Elmer’s glue and she didn’t have a small paint brush to put it on the backs of the pictures, so my nana was smart and got creative herself and I used a normal size Q-Tip as my paint bush. It actually worked very well for me!
• We glued the vintage phones on opposite sides for starters, then we finished with gluing the rest in the middle. I only coated the middle on the four sides of each one. I did that to make sure it stays there and if we need to, we can glue the sides down later. Somehow I manged not to get all over my toes.
• Now the cardboard is still at my nana’s sitting up somewhere safe (hopefully!) drying up! Here is a picture of the final product!

Keep an eye for the next post this weekend! Enjoy your day or evening! ♥

History Really Does Repeat Itself

So, I’ve had this “post” saved into my Word Processor for probably two months now. I wanted to release it last month but everytime I tried to do it, something would always distract me. I think a few days July came we got the July-August issue of Smithsonian magazine and it had an amazing article in there that really got me thinking. I think I read it all and took a break for a good twenty minutes and sat back up and began to write out what I was feeling as I was letting everything settle in my mind of what I just read. I loved it so much that I wanted to express my thoughts on it and I have also included the link at the bottom so you can read the actual article if you wanted. Enjoy! 

Everybody knows that I am not a big fan of magazines. I wasn’t always a hater of them though! When I was younger, mostly as a teen, whenever we’d go to the store, they had the more adult-gossip magazines that my mom was obsessed over and then on the second and third racks there were the science fiction ones that had catchy titles about dead celebrities living on beyond the grave, haunting their own houses and well, sometimes they said they were not really dead at all! Usually, the pre-teen magazines were at the very bottom or on the rack they had when you first get inside the store. That’s where I was, googling at the cute boys like Backstreet Boys and Justin Timberlake. This is how I found I was more like my mom than I thought I was at that time. Would you actually believe though, there is one magazine that I actually do like to read? If you’ve read my blog before or seen some of the books I’ve read then you know I’m like a huge history buff. Well, that’s also a family trait and my papaw is just as addicted to the magazine as I am!

It’s the Smithsonian magazine. My dad actually came in my room one day, with a new one and I’m not kidding you when I say I got so giddy and didn’t take me long before I sat up in my bed and flipped over my remote (to prop it up) and begin reading it. Our July-August issue had just came in and the cover was pretty dark. It’s a deep read backdrop with elephant tusks on the sides along with the different titles of articles around the cover. The main article is about The Hunt for Africa’s Most Notorious Elephant Poacher and I did try to read that article but after getting into it and reading about the baby elephant I had to turn the page. Just before that sad story though, was a very interesting tale of how everybody uses social media. It seems very strange to be reading such a nice article like this, when most of us are typing more than writing actual letters, checks, and calling on the phone. I have always believed in the saying, “history repeats itself” and with reading this article, it seems like the hype of something new like this has been around for quite some time. How sites like Pinterest, Tumblr, and our ordinary “copy and paste” have an even bigger history than we all think they do!

Computers didn’t come out until the 80’s and even the internet didn’t become known until the late 90’s. I didn’t know what internet was until I was in third grade. I had been using a computer for two years before that. For me, being able to reach the keyboard and do the typing with my feet was a bigger thing than anything else we were learning in our computer class! It wasn’t until I was in middle school did we actually start learning how to save, delete, open documents but the majority of us were learning how to do the easy “copy and paste” that we all seem to love with all our hearts. Surprising this article, which was called, Piece Of Mind by Clive Thompson, most of what we are doing as far as the “pinning” and “copy and paste” goes, it’s been around a long freaking time. The fun past time for most women was scrap booking and it has been around for a few centuries according to the article, as close to the 18th century, it was common for women to cut out little things from the newspapers and put them in a book for save keeping. Different things that people were doing back then has come back into this new form of using technology to post things to places and hopefully, it stays there.

When I was in my last year of high school and I started blogging, practically everybody in my family said I should go into creative writing, but they’ve been saying that for years! I had enjoyed writing little things, but writing as a career would just take away the joy of finding an idea for a post and actually finding the words to express yourself. I didn’t want to make writing into my worst enemy, but I also had another reason for the recent hating on magazines. Why does a person want to read about somebody’s life from another person’s angle? Why do we enjoy reading the lies and rumors of others, than the actual story they tell us? This is why I turned to reading blogs only, because most are very truthful and by real people (or so I hope!) just casually talking about their personal style, favorite memories, their travels, food they mastered at making and DIY projects they recently finished. I have even gone as far as reading celebrity blogs and I’ve been enjoying those more than just a normal magazine. I am a lifestyle blogger, but I talk about a number of things. I’m generally like a magazine as I like to promote other bloggers and their blogs, which is like an ad in a way! I post pictures of everyday life and I’m known for writing more than I probably should in a normal post. I’m not the perfect writer as there are words missing the posts and I misspell words even after I’ve done the spell check.

I find it sad of how the world looks at the Internet nowadays, it’s normal for people from the ages of 13-49 years old creating profiles on different websites, but now that there are iPads, and touch screen phones both babies and elderly people are getting into the whole phenomenon of being able go online everyday and to update their everyday life with the world. Something that I have recently found that babies are even more curious about these new inventions they’ve never seen before, that didn’t even come out until after they’re parents were born. They know how to turn a phone on and flip through different pictures with their little fingers. Seeing kids walking and riding bikes are rare anymore, but I have seen more kids out in the last two months this year. Everything we know is fading and for some, they can accept the change and have kept up with the new changes of the world, but there are some like me who accepts changes in life but will always remember that history come back around and never let us forget about what we did,

LINKS:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/when-copy-and-paste-reigned-age-scrapbooking-180951844/

Pop Culture

Something that I think everybody is obsessed with is gossiping. We’ve all done it a hundred times, no matter what you think or say, you’re just as guilty of it too. We assume first before we find out any thing else out. When I first heard about Kaley Cucco was engaged for a couple of weeks or months, I don’t remember what it was, everybody (including myself) well “she’s got to be pregnant” and sometimes that’s true, but lately I’ve realized it’s not like that anymore it seems like. Everybody who is getting pregnant is married or has been engaged longer to even before they announce they’re expecting and they usually don’t get married until either right before the baby comes or a few months after the baby arrives. I mean, if you were to look outside the life of these celebrities and look around your neighborhood, they are doing the exact same thing. We complain and make comments on Facebook all the time and after just reading these bad and annoying comments that people make every single day. I stopped commenting and “liking” posts to stop seeing the box appear. My mom is obsessed with all of these magazines. Everytime she goes to the store, she will literally get four or five of them at a time. After she’s read them, she stores them underneath the coffee table.

One of the main reasons why I have always said “no” to becoming a journalist is the fact that nowadays, lying to get a buck is pretty popular. It’s always been popular since probably the first newspaper was published. I don’t want to be one of those people who has to lie and somebody reads it and tells me it’s not enough. Do more. Make up something. I’m usually pretty good about making up stories, but I don’t feel like be sued for what my boss wanted out of me. So it’s not worth it to tear somebody down just to get paid for it. So with that being said, I can say proudly that I have went and unliked all of the magazine pages on my Facebook. I never had any on my Twitter so I’m pretty okay with not seeing everybody’s personal lives plastered in pictures and reporters asking and wondering if one couple is cute or not. Everybody knows I don’t like being a burden to people and have my own set of rules in my mind so doing this shouldn’t be a big shock to you. I hate people enough, I’d rather not hate innocent people because everybody has something juicy about them. I’ve been wanting to clean my room for almost a month and instead I cleaned my Facebook. It’s not a bad thing really.