F is for Fear

I have a lot of fears.

I’m afraid of tornados, hurricanes, really bad thunderstorms, gigantic bridges over water, and the word “panties” to name a few.  I’ve been known to do a freaked out heebie geebie dance over spiders before and after squashing them into oblivion with a Chuck Taylor.  I’m also terrified of the idea of people who I love dying.  I like to think that aside from the panties thing, most of my fears are pretty common.

Some of my fears are kind of weird though.  Like, I’m afraid of heights, but I love to fly, love roller coasters, and really dig going up in super tall buildings like the Sears Tower (Yes, I know it’s now the Willis Tower but it’s always going to be the Sears Tower, damn it!).  I’m afraid of being in water that I  can’t see across, but I love being in and around water.  I know, I’m a special girl.

I don’t like spiders, but I can generally work up the courage to kill them or suck them up in a vaccum.  The water thing is still near the top of the list, but I managed to go on a multi day cruise without anything close to a panic attack.  When a bird is in a store, I hate it.  Bird houses in zoos where you’re supposed to walk through and gaze at the birds and they can fly around you are a huge no-no in my book.   But if there’s a bird outside and it doesn’t invade my space bubble, I’m not going to go running away from it screaming or anything like that.  I guess what I’m trying to say is that I have these fears but for the most part I can face them.

There’s one fear though that I’ve discovered that I simply can’t face.  In fact, it is by far the most paralyzing fear I’ve ever experienced and it’s one that I never knew I had until I had to face it.  It’s such a true fear that even thinking about writing about it in this post is starting to freak me out.  I’m sitting here bouncing my legs nervously and deep breathing just in anticipation of explaining what the hell I’m talking about.  

E is for Excited!

 I love movies.  Looooove them.  I also love books, and love when books are made into movies.

The Harry Potter books were amazing and turned into brilliant movies.  The Twilight books had crappy writing but a great idea that pulled me in.  The first Twilight movie was so campy and ridiculous that although I liked it, I still make fun of regularly… but the following films got better with different directors and actually were pretty great, IMHO.

A book that I struggled reading was The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  It took over half of the book for me to get into it because there was SO much information purging done, but once I got to the actual action I loved it, and I subsequently loved the other two books as well.  I’ve yet to see the Swedish versions of the films (they’re in my Netflix queue though!) but the American version of the first book pretty much blew my mind.  Not only because Daniel Craig is freaking hot and Rooney Mara is my latest celebrity crush… but also because it was an awesome film version of the book without all of the back story bullshit that I hated about the book so much.

I absolutely LOVED the book The DaVinci Code and was really excited about the movie when I heard it was being made.  Then of course the movie came out and was SO incredibly ass sucking that I left the theater at the end royally pissed off that the film was so bad in relation to the book.

The Lovely Bones is another book that I adore and when I heard it was going to be a movie I was uber excited.  Then I saw the preview and thought, “Huh… that doesn’t look right.”  When I finally saw the film, it was okay but certainly was a letdown that didn’t live up to the book at all.

My Sister’s Keeper was a fantastic book and when I saw the movie preview I cried because it was so moving.  There were a lot of readers who were royally pissed because the movie version of the book changed the ending… Unlike my anger with the changing of the end of The DaVinci Code, however, the changing of My Sister’s Keeper didn’t piss me off and I loved the movie.

Tomorrow night/Friday morning I with millions of other people will be at the midnight premiere of the film version of Suzanne Collin’s book The Hunger Games.  I am geekishly excited about this film.  I adored the books… well, book three pissed me off, but in general I loved the series.  While I was reading the first book the cast of the film was being chosen and almost daily I’d find out which actor was playing which character, so the people I’ll see in the film were mostly the people I had in my head while reading.  I have an extreme love for Josh Hutcherson too… I’m Team Peeta all the way!

Last September I bought the books for my baby brother’s 16^th birthday and pretty much demanded that he read the first book by this week so that he’d have read it before the movie.  It took him a while, but about a week ago I got a text that he’d finished the book and now is equally geeked about seeing the movie.  His texts about how excited he is totally make my day, by the way.  Sadly he’s not going to the midnight premiere with me, being that it’s a school night and all… but we have a date for the weekend to see the movie together. 🙂

The previews for the film send me into Geek Mode… I simply can’t wait for this movie!  By seeing the previews and seeing sneak peeks of scenes, I have to say it looks pretty awesome.  I truly hope that the movie is as good as we all hope it’s going to be and as awesome as it looks.  I mean, it has to be epic, right?  Nearly every person cast in this film appears to be perfectly cast.  I was a little iffy on Woody Harrelson, because I’d heard rumors of Dennis Quaid getting the role of Haymitch and I really wanted that to happen, but seeing Woody in costume sold me and I think he’s going to be awesome.

So yeah… to say that I’m excited about this movie is a bit of an understatement.  Tomorrow night when I get into line for the midnight premiere, I’ll be in my geekish glory with a bunch of other book nerds and I’m totally going to enjoy it!  If you haven’t read the books… go do it now and thank me later!

“May the odds ever be in your favor!”

D is for Dementia

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged anything other than a book review via Goodreads.  It’s pretty much a clue that I’ve been overwhelmed by life when all I want to do is lose myself in book after book and I don’t even get any of my own writing done.

Things around the Compound have been interesting.  I knew that having my grandpa move in with us would be difficult.  It was hard before he moved in because my mother and I were the only people in the family who were regularly taking care of my grandpa.  Doing so meant driving a good 20-30 minutes one way from where we were living to where he was living.  Trying to get anyone else to help out was basically a joke so we did it ourselves.  There was even a time when we came home early from vacation because no other family in town could check on Grandpa for us just to make sure he was okay when we were unable to reach him by phone.

When we moved into a bigger home that could accommodate him as well, it got rid of all of the extra driving between our house and his apartment.  It also ensured that he wasn’t alone all of the time and would be able to have daily interaction with people instead of what he was getting in his apartment (which was basically if my mom and I didn’t visit, he was alone… every now and then someone would stop by for a few minutes but those moments were far and few between).

Having Grandpa in the house means a lot more than just an extra roommate though…  A lot more than I think many people understand.  He turned 97 years old yesterday and although he’s still pretty amazing when it comes to things he can do on his own, he’s also got a whole list of other things he simply can’t do anymore.  He’s also regressing regularly and finding out that things he had been doing just fine until recently aren’t possible anymore.

Dealing with Alzheimer’s/Dementia is incredibly hard to deal with on a daily basis.  It’s kind of like having an adult in your home who sometimes acts like an adult and other times acts like a preschooler.  Except when they’re acting like a preschooler they truly don’t see what’s wrong with it and think it’s perfectly okay.  Gramps recently spent fifteen days in the hospital due to pneumonia, sepsis, shingles and a handful of other issues… on his first full day in the hospital he spit a half chewed carrot across the room because he didn’t want to chew it.  At home and in restaurants if he decides that he doesn’t like something we’ve given him to eat, he leans forward and spits it out onto his plate or the table.  Sure, it can be humorous at times (having a sick sense of humor is key when living with dementia in the house), but it’s also quite frustrating and very, very sad. 

C is for Courage

I saw the movie The Help tonight with my mom. It was a great movie that certainly made me think about courage. Courage means something different to everyone, I think. It’s one of those things that is personal and changes according to the person dealing with it. To simply look the word up in the dictionary you’ll see this:

cour•age noun
1. the quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face difficulty, danger, pain, etc., without fear; bravery.
2. Obsolete. the heart as the source of emotion.

I quite like the second definition actually… “The heart as the source of emotion.” That’s truly what courage is, isn’t it? Listening to your heart and knowing that it’s telling you the right thing even if you’re scared out of your mind or the world around you is telling you that you’re wrong.

Kathyn Stockett, the author of The Help submitted the book sixty times before getting it published by Putnam. Sixty rejection letters, countless rewrites, and yet she didn’t give up. Now she has not only a bestselling novel, but an Oscar-worthy movie based on that novel. Oh and did I mention it’s the first book she ever wrote? That’s courage.

The movie and book The Help are set in the 1960’s right in the thick of the Civil Rights Movement. At one point in the movie Medgar Evers is mentioned. He fought in World War II, fought for civil rights, was instrumental in the desegregation of the University of Mississippi, and was a NAACP field secretary. After his assignation by the KKK, he received full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery. He was courage.

On December 24, 1969, only six years after Evers was killed and one year after Dr. Martin Luther King ,Jr. was assassinated for his work in civil rights, a black man and a white woman were married. They faced hatred and bigotry from society as well as their own families, but they went on to have two children, a boy and a girl (said girl happens to be the author of this blog), and showed the world that love has nothing to do with race. They were courage.

People show their courage every day. Sometimes it’s huge, and other times it’s just some small thing that most of the world wouldn’t even notice. What matters though is what that act of courage means to you. If it’s important to you, no matter what anyone else says, it’s courage. If you make a choice that you know with all of your heart is the right thing to do, tell anyone else who thinks differently to screw off. It’s your life, not theirs. You know what your heart needs even when the world is telling you you’re crazy. You might even doubt yourself, but your heart knows exactly what you need while your head is busy trying to talk you out of it. Sometimes you just have to trust your heart to do the thinking. Take a leap and as the definition says, let your heart be the source of your emotion. Don’t give up on the book submission you know could be great, don’t accept laws that don’t make sense and fight to change them, don’t let people tell you who you can love, and don’t let someone else tell you that you aren’t courageous if you know that you are.

B is for Boat…

A is for Aging Gracefully

Tomorrow my Great Aunt Katherine will be 102 years old. I had the pleasure of spending part of Mother’s Day weekend with her and it was pretty darn inspiring. Aunt Katherine has always been one of those people who is just awesome to know. She is the oldest of five children, a mom, a grandma, a writer, and a retired teacher. She’s a strong, wonderful woman.

At this amazing age her hearing is a little shabby, but hearing aids and the occasional raised voice help greatly. Her sight is fading as well, but she can still see well enough to have recognized me from across a table even though it had been at least fifteen years since we’d last met face to face. Her mind, sense of humor, and her infectious grin are still right there and despite a few extra wrinkles, she looks the same as I remember her looking.

Aunt Katherine’s surviving “baby” brothers aren’t lacking in the aging department either. My grandpa is 96 years old, and my Great Uncle Lew is 90. To see the two of them over the weekend with their big sister was quite a treat. The “boys” fell right into Little Brother Mode telling stories about Aunt Katherine with giggles while she shared a few gems with us about them too.

When it comes to aging people seem so quick to try and cover up their age, lie about it, or create clever ways to present their true age. “I’m celebrating my 12th anniversary of my 21st birthday…” But I say, be proud of your age. CELEBRATE when your birthday comes around each year! Of course there are going to be things you’d wish you’d done by a certain age and never accomplished, but at least you’re still here and still have time to try!

I’m going to be 35 this year and I can admit to having a few moments of impending doom when thinking about this milestone I’m about to hit. It’s very easy to sit back and list every little thing I haven’t done yet. No kids, no spouse, no real career, still not a published author… the list could go on for ages. But what I’ve decided is that it’s not the things that I haven’t done that matter. There’s still time to do more and be more, but I should be proud of what I’ve done thus far! I can be proud of the Me that I am right now at this moment and look forward to the Me I’ll be one day.

In less than five months this year I’ve read twenty-one books, knit a baby blanket, gone to the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, stepped out of my comfort zone more than a few times, learned new embroidery skills, worked on a novel, made people smile and giggle, created a logo for a friend’s event, supported family and friends, booked a cruise with people I’ve never met in person, played countless hours of make believe with The Doodlebutt, and given countless hugs. These are all things to be proud of and yet it’s not even close to a being a complete list of things I’ve done since the year began. It’s time to be proud of my accomplishments instead of pointing out the things I’ve “failed” at. Yeah, I have a job that I can’t particularly stand and it drives me nuts on a regular basis… but you know what? I HAVE a job! No, I’m not perfect… in fact I’m pleasantly imperfect, and just like my Great Aunt Katherine, I too plan to age gracefully.

Blog Pimp & A Challenge

Morning By Morning

While blog stalking I found both a blog that I think I love, and and idea that I think is pretty darn cool. Morning By Morning is a blog by a gal named Stacey who is a mom, a photog, a crafter, a lover of Pyrex, obsessed with thrift shops, and not to mention she’s a fellow Belieber so I have to love her! Her blog is a simple yet beautiful one to visit with great crafty posts and lovely photographs of everyday life with her little guy. She shares things like her “Project Restyle” series where she takes something “old” and upcylces it into something new and wonderful (very HGTV, I likey!), along with pictures of her awfully adorable cats, thrift shop finds and other goodies. So yeah, check her out… she’s over in the blog roll to your right —>

Photo Credit: MiChiMa's Etsy Shop*

The idea that I’m ganking from Ms. Stacey is the Alphabet Challenge. Although I don’t know the specific rules of this challenge, I’m pretty sure I can make up my own rules and play the game however I want because yes, this is my blog and I’ll do what I wanna! *grin* But I gather that the gist of the idea is to create a post for each letter of the alphabet. I can do that… easy peasy, right? I will not put a time limit on myself by saying that it’s going to be a daily thing because let’s face it… that won’t happen. But I will finish the whole alphabet eventually thus adding 26 fantastical posts to this here blog. I won’t even follow in Doodlebutt’s steps by combining the letters L M N O and P into the phrase “M a little Pee” no matter how freaking adorable it is! Heck, I’m not even going to start the challenge in this post, so take that!

I think the challenge will be a fun one and I’m already thinking of different things that I can use for the letters (although I’m trying to not plan ahead too much, as I want this to be more of a random challenge). So stay tuned and keep your eyes out for upcoming Alphabet Challenge posts!

Oh and for those of you celebrating this weekend whether you’re celebrating in a church, temple, or just your living room with a box of peeps and some decorative grass… Happy Easter!

*MiChiMa’s Etsy Shop