Keeping Up With The ConGoers

Since my health went into it's downward spiral, I never thought I'd be as busy as I used to be, when I healthy, hanging out with friends nearly every day and clubbing with them once a week... hauling in reminiscent rant... but the past month has been unbelievably crazy!

Since starting my business, and finally deciding on the which direction I wanted to take it, it's been non-stop work. Work that I can do at my own pace. I'm standing, sitting or laying down whenever I need to. I don't think there's another job out there that would afford me such accommodations. In fact, I've only held one job that would even remotely come close and that was with Tribal Voice. Still one of the best jobs I ever had... reminiscing again.

Lately, with my own business, I've been buried in research, looking for decently priced suppliers for feathers, gems, beads, findings and such. Not to mention event coordinating and getting my business into trade shows and conventions, which I hope will be a boon in advertising and sales. Then, of course, I'm busy making stuff to sell. I have so many ideas I want to make reality that my hands (and wallet) can't keep up! Not having the materials or means to quickly manufacture my designs into reality is just a bit frustrating. But I soldier on, through the pain, impatience, frustration, because I know, eventually, everything will come together and I can show off my work with pride!

I still can't believe life lead me here, working with gems and beads, making jewelry (of sorts). Why? My entire life I rebelled against jewelry. My mom was - is - a jewelry fanatic, always buying stuff on ACN and the jewelry shopping networks. She's been forcing jewelry on me since I was little and had to wear jade bracelets, the kind that you have to break off when you out grew it. *sigh*

I'm currently set up to attend several trade shows/conventions this year, a new experience that I hope will be a positive one, helping me become less anxious. As long as my husband is with me and I have a table to be safe behind, I think I'll be fine. Pain levels, on the other hand, we'll just have to see how it goes. My first show is an anime convention, Tekkoshocon. I'm going to love dressing up as a Tayledras and I'm for sure going to dress as an Adept Mage, though I haven't figured out my name, clan or bondbird yet. I'm also going to dress as a Shin'a'in Trader from Kata'shin'a'in.

Not sure if I mentioned it before, but it was the Valdemar books by Mercedes Lackey that inspired me to start my own business making hair adornments! I love the descriptions she gives of the ones Firesong wears through out the series. I'm hoping to bring my interpretation of his hair feathers to life and share them with everyone! I've seen one person selling these hair "thongs", inspired by the same books, but I feel they were much too plain for someone like Firesong k'Treva. So I'm trying my hand at it, making elaborate, unique pieces, all handmade. Something I hope would do Firesong justice and gain approval from Misty herself!

BTW That's Darkwind in the pic just above. I couldn't find a good pic of Firesong with hair adornments. Oh, and I figure since so many people have drawn Hawkbrothers and Heralds in manga style, cosplaying one is fair game for an Anime convention!

My next show is the Steel City Con, a comic and toy show that boasts of being the largest toy show in the US! I wonder if any of the celebs will see my work and buy something, that'd be awesome!

After Steel City I'll be attending Anthrocon! WOOO Anthrocon! It's a Furry convention. If you have misconceptions about Furries, you need to quickly educate yourself. They're just people who love anthropomorphic animals. You know, mascots, Tom and Jerry cartoons, Thundercats, Mickey Mouse, werewolves, Yogi Bear and so on. I used to have some wild misconceptions about Furries.

When my daughter wanted to go with her friends to Anthrocon as a furry, I was a bit concerned about perverts at the convention (there are a few at every type of convention though, to be honest) and equated Furries as such, in general. I attended Anthrocon with her, at the very last minute when I heard Mercedes Lackey was going to be there. After spending the day at Anthrocon, I was rightly educated and fell in love with the Furry fandom. As for being a furry, I'm almost there. I'd love to be a gryphon! But the fur -err feather- suit might be too difficult for me to make and wear with my disabilities. So I've chosen to go as a Kyree.

This is a pic my daughter drew for me. The green and black fursuit head above is her's.

There are a couple other shows I'd like to be an exhibitor at for the US Pain foundation, all health related shows. Then there are the bead shows coming, 3 of them I think. I just want to attend the Bead Mercantile show in March but I'd like a space at the show in November, when they come back. The Intergalactic Bead Show is coming next month, but I think I'll just be a buyer there.

I got some really beautiful feathers in but I'm waiting for more findings to come in so I can weave my "magic" and create some beautiful pieces! I feel each one is a work of art. No two are ever exact and I pour my heart and soul into each piece. I just hope others love them as much as I do!

I think this was a long enough update. I still need to update the store blog!

P.S. I've opened a Listia account for giving away free stuff, check it out! You should see the widget at the top of my blog's right side column. Who knows what I'll throw in there!

Anxiety

I try not to leave the house. I know if I do, crossing a bridge is inevitable. When we do cross a bridge I have a good deathgrip on the door or seatbelt with one hand near the latch, quick release should we go over into the water. Breathe shallow or hold my breath, as if I'm trying conserve precious oxygen in car not yet flooded with water. Just bridges over water. I'm deathly afraid, possibly phobic, of drowning in a car. White knuckled it from VA to DE, Newport News to Norfolk, over Bay Bridge and Golden Gate going to Santa Rosa, CA. Passed out (wasn't driving) on the bridge over Lake Pontchartrain, puke coming off a bridge from GA to SC. I moved to the City of Bridges. What. An. Idiot!

Bridges aside, there are people. Crowds create more anxiety than sparsely populated areas. Hypervigilence.

Know my surroundings, what people are doing, who looks shady/out of place, scan for threats, visualize escape routes, what makes a good weapon, hiding spot, sit with my back against an obstacle.

- Like driving. Visualize all possible events and actions to take. Don't stay blocked in when moving freely. Don't stay behind large vehicles. Traffic? Stay on shouldered lanes, if there is no "out", breathe! - I have it down pat, just need a glance, gut instinct doesn't lie. The guy with the camera, the one hanging around the play area, does he have a kid there? No? Why is he there? Why is he taking pictures? What's that look on his face? Body language. Remember the face, the clothes, just in case. Pedophile. Note the time/day. The process runs in the background while I'm talking, walking, shopping. Like taking a snapshot. The mother with the daughter - no - neice? She didn't call her "mom" but she's comfortable. Irrelevant. No threat. Scan. Always, always, always be aware of surroundings. The only visual to come relatively close to my thought process is the newer Sherlock films, how Sherlock thought before he acted. That's how it is with me.

RR-PTSD is a bitch.

Eighteen

What a crazy year!

I can't believe I made it and succeeded in raising a good daughter! Sure, we had moments of eye-rolling and heavy sighing. There was the occasional stomping off and door slam. I mean, perfection isn't possible when raising kids! I tally my successes differently. She never did what I used to do. Which also turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. By that, I mean the "good" things I did, she didn't do. The "bad" things I did, she also didn't do. But there's a middle ground we both share: caring too much for others, and not enough for ourselves, that we end up being used by those we help. Unfortunately, I still fall prey to, as my mom puts it, "having a big heart". Maybe it's our nature. We give people more chances than they deserve. I always hope that people will see the errors they've made, without having to be told out right, a kind of self-realization that seems, glaringly apparent now, elusive to most people. We'll never learn, we just keep hoping. There are rare occasions, where we realize we're just too damned accommodating, that we'll tell ourselves enough is enough and the next person to "use" us, gets the boot. Bridge burned. No going back. Then we feel bad. Maybe if we'd given that person, after a dozen chances already, one more chance... what suckers we are.

Let's go back to my awesome daughter! Unlike me, she's has never snuck out of the house and she's never even run out of the house in a fit of rage! She's always been where she says she's going to be (GPS verified, unknown to her, or maybe she did know?) and she's home when she's supposed to be. I don't really tell my daughter when to be home when she goes out with friends, she gives me a time and she sticks to it. All I've ever asked her to do was tell me where she was going and who she was going to be with. I'd just ask her to be careful and to make the right choices. I made no calls to parents to verify, no texts every ten minutes to check up... she's been very responsible. I dunno if it's because she has a developmental disability (or, as I suspect, Asperger's) but she seems incapable of lying. I used to lie to my parents all the time, especially where I was going and who I'd be with. Growing up where I did (population less than five HUNDRED), you had to have a solid story and means to cover your tracks or the town gossip would have you plastered all over her small town paper column in a heartbeat. She had eyes (nearly) everywhere! It also didn't help that I lived right next door to her best friend, so I had to get incredibly creative! Maybe it's not that my daughter is incapable of lying, it's that she's incapable of being a good liar, at least to me. No... that's not it. She's very blunt and honest. Which many people take the wrong way because she doesn't spare feelings, one of the main reasons I believe she's an Aspie, she doesn't really have empathy for others. Think Sheldon, from The Big Bang Theory, that would be how my daughter is.

Up until about a year ago, I felt I hadn't bonded with her. This greatly distressed me and I had no idea how to handle it. All I could do was continue to be there when she needed me and be the one who would teach her about personal responsibility. Then, she started dating a kid from school. I was relieved that she had found someone to "feel" something for but as time went by, I noticed it wasn't so much about "feeling" as it was the "age-appropriate thing to do". Afterall, most of the girls she knew, not necessarily her friends, had boyfriends. I'd had "the talk" with her a long time ago and thought it'd be a good time for a refresher course. Things snowballed from there, in a bittersweet way. She was getting sexually suggestive texts from her boyfriend that she didn't know how to respond to. She brought them to me and I was like a deer in the headlights. She was actually asking for my advice! Instead of telling her what to do, I told her to think about it. Think about what she wanted to do, how she felt and wanted to respond. I nervously waited. Days went by and I wanted to ask her what she did and get all up in her business. Then it came, she ended the relationship. Yes, she cried. A sign her dad took as her being heartbroken. But I knew my daughter, she wasn't sad. When I went in to talk to her, she was all smiles and her eyes said it all. All that frustration she'd been holding in, because of her boyfriend, had finally been released. She cried more out of relief than sadness. She wasn't ready for sex and wasn't comfortable being pushed in that direction by her boyfriend. Making the right, for her, choices. She'd done it! She'd faced a major teen hurdle and overcome it herself. She's been a lot more open since then.

I'd never had that with my mom. My mother is from another country, where customs are different and she refused to learn new things unless an adult she knew told her something. I never got the "sex talk" from my mom. My parents let the school deal with that by signing a permission slip to attend "Sex Ed". These days, now that I'm almost 40, my mom is reaching out, but in the way you would to a teenage girl. It's rather silly how she tries to explain to me how to handle life and its ups and downs. Too little, too late. I vowed to never be that distant to me kids while they're growing up. And I can proudly say, I've not turned in to my mother!

(drafted post I forgot about and I'm just now posting LOL oooops!)

For Those Without Chronic Pain

TIPS FOR DEALING WITH PEOPLE IN PAIN

1. People with chronic pain seem unreliable (we can’t count on ourselves). When feeling better we promise things (and mean it); when in serious pain, we may not even show up.

2. An action or situation may result in pain several hours later, or even the next day. Delayed pain is confusing to people who have never experienced it.

3. Pain can inhibit listening and other communication skills. It’s like having someone shouting at you, or trying to talk with a fire alarm going off in the room. The effect of pain on the mind can seem like attention deficit disorder. So you may have to repeat a request, or write things down for a person with chronic pain. Don’t take it personally, or think that they are stupid.

4. The senses can overload while in pain. For example, noises that wouldn’t normally bother you, seem too much.

5. Patience may seem short. We can’t wait in a long line; can’t wait for a long drawn out conversation.

6. Don’t always ask “how are you” unless you are genuinely prepared to listen it just points attention inward.

7. Pain can sometimes trigger psychological disabilities (usually very temporary). When in pain, a small task, like hanging out the laundry, can seem like a huge wall, too high to climb over. An hour later the same job may be quite OK. It is sane to be depressed occasionally when you hurt.

8. Pain can come on fairly quickly and unexpectedly. Pain sometimes abates after a short rest. Chronic pain people appear to arrive and fade unpredictably to others.

9. Knowing where a refuge is, such as a couch, a bed, or comfortable chair, is as important as knowing where a bathroom is. A visit is much more enjoyable if the chronic pain person knows there is a refuge if needed. A person with chronic pain may not want to go anywhere that has no refuge (e.g.no place to sit or lie down).

10. Small acts of kindness can seem like huge acts of mercy to a person in pain. Your offer of a pillow or a cup of tea can be a really big thing to a person who is feeling temporarily helpless in the face of encroaching pain.

11. Not all pain is easy to locate or describe. Sometimes there is a body-wide feeling of discomfort, with hard to describe pains in the entire back, or in both legs, but not in one particular spot you can point to. Our vocabulary for pain is very limited, compared to the body’s ability to feel varieties of discomfort.

12. We may not have a good “reason” for the pain. Medical science is still limited in its understanding of pain. Many people have pain that is not yet classified by doctors as an officially recognized “disease”. That does not reduce the pain, – it only reduces our ability to give it a label, and to have you believe us.

AUTHOR UNKNOWN

I Am Who I Am

Some call me dull and boring, others call me goth, many call me weird, freakish, or a geek. So who am I... really?

Genetically, I'm Japanese, Cherokee and West European. I love my heritage, especially the Cherokee and Celt part. The similarities between the two cultures are strikingly similar and I find that absolutely fascinating.

• The future is a dream. Dreams are worth having.
• I'm very much an introvert.
• Fire is hypnotic, I could stare at it for hours. Nothing like having arms wrapped around you as you stare at bonfire, fireplace or campfire. Damn, already getting mushy, bleh.
• When I die, my funeral song will be "I'll Be There" by Escape Club, no "ifs", "ands" or "buts".
• I love coffee.
  
• Don't speak to me of boy bands or soap operas, I'm not interested.
• I love horror, anime and sci-fi movies, I despise "chick flicks".
• I can be sophisticated or crude in the blink of an eye, it depends on who I am talking to and if someone says something that can be twisted into some sexually perverted comment!
• Winter is the best season. You can always warm up with blankets. Summer, you can be naked and still sweat your ass off, for all the wrong reasons. Fall and Spring are too back and forth between cold and hot, not to mention spring allergies and pre-winter colds/flus because of the drastic changes in temp.
• I love Diet Pepsi.
  
• I can be an angel.
  
• I can be a demon.
  
• I can be serious.
  
• I can be playful.
  
• I can be a doting mother.
• I can be the iron fist of discipline.
  
• I can be silently malicious.
  
• I can be kind.
  
• I can be a whisper.
  
• I can be a scream.
• I believe in universal health care and gay marriage.
  
• General conversation is one thing until I truly get to know you. I keep my distance until then.
• I'm a thinker. I will sit for hours, just thinking about anything and everything. From the mundane to the amusing, from the scientific to the absurd.
• I'm not afraid of my dark side, its part of me.
  
• I love life. I live in the present, its where everything exciting happens!
• I love memories of the past, but they're nothing more than that, memories - images and experiences one shouldn't cling to or try to hold in stasis.
  
• I do not speak much of my beliefs, my beliefs are my own, no one will change them and I have no interest in making you see things my way.
• I love coffee.
  
• A lyric soprano. I love to sing. I sing several different styles and don't limit myself to just one.
• I love art, all sorts of art.
• I like musicals *gasp*, sure do!
• Halloween is the best holiday ever, I love scaring the crap out of kids but when their parents freak out too, its icing on the cake. Besides, it gives everyone something to laugh about 3 hours later.
  
• I like to bake and get creative with cakes. My parents used to make custom wedding and birthday cakes.
• I love Diet Pepsi.
  
• I love working with theatrical make-up!
  
• I love Harleys and custom choppers, not so fond of crotch rockets. I have a motorcycle license but my neck, back and knee problems keep me from riding.
  
• I like cars that have been customized with some sense of class and taste. Low riders suck, so do caddies with 5 foot fucking rims. Spinners are for retards.
  
• Sports: Manchester United, Philadelphia Soul, New York Giants. Not real big on it but those are the teams I would ultimately choose, for shits and giggles.
• No one is an expert. There's always something new to learn.
• I could care less about Desperate Housewives, Joan of Arcadia, Judging Amy and shows along those lines.
• I love coffee.
  
• Reality shows are the bane of television.
• I'm a ghost writer but not a scab. I DO have some morals.
• I take a Kurosawan (Akira Kurosawa) approach to my dreams and turn them into stories and incorporate them into scripts.
  
• I'm a promoter for WBR bands (close to my heart are HIM and MCR), Darren Bousman and for my buddy, Duncan Jones, for their movies.
• I love Diet Pepsi.
  
• I run the MCRmy of Pittsburgh, I lead a group of kids/teens/adults who promote My Chemical Romance, advocate against self harm, support the Make A Wish Foundation, The Syrentha J. Savio Endowment and Amnesty International, and participate in local community service.
  
• I'm part of the SArmy (Sylar's Army) to promote awareness for epilepsy through Zachary Quinto (aka Sylar on "Heroes" and Spock in the new "Star Trek", local city hero).
• I'm a member of the Repo Army promoting Repo: The Genetic Opera, independent film making, no holds barred anti-mainstream creativity and community involvement in the darker side of the arts.
• If you're famous and don't use your status or money to better the lives of the kids in the crappy neighborhood you claim to come from or give back to society in a meaningful, non-entertaining way, and would rather invest in expensive cars, jewelry and homes, while still bitching about how you grew up, you're a pile of shit and not worth any respect.
• I love coffee.
  
• I don't bother with people who are willingly content to be sheep. Take control of your life and be lead it!
  
• I try to avoid confrontation, its not my job to change the closed-minded, self-absorbed, ignorant people on it. Most people grow up eventually, others, shouldn't have time wasted on them. Those who seriously piss me off, I walk away from and they end up as characters who meet a ghastly demise in a story or script. It's more entertaining that way.
• Supernatural, CSI (pre Morpheus), X-Files, True Blood, Torchwood, Doctor Who, V, The Vampire Diaries, Moonlight and Heroes are the best shows on TV, in my opinion.
  
• I travel quite a bit. I've been to many of the states in the US including Hawaii. I've also been to the UK and Germany.
• I love Diet Pepsi
  
• I like Chinese and Italian food but give me a nice, juicy, rare steak and I'm happy.
• I detest spicy food.
  
• I'm a night person, always have been so its not unusual for me to be up until 4 or 5 in the morning.
• People watching is fun as long as you don't take it seriously.
  
• I love camping and bonfires.
• I love coffee.
  
• I love wolves, dragons and the Malaysian Fruit Bat (They are SO adorable!)
  
• I'm a huge LoTR fan, have been since HS.
  
• I love the Valdemar books by Mercedes Lackey, my favorite being the Herald Mage Trilogy. If you're a homophobe, stay away.
• Arthas, where are you?
  
• Yes, I like Harry Potter.
  
• Star Wars or Star Trek? Star Wars.
  
• I love Jager-Bombs. I was introduced to them on the islands and never turned back. I used to be a big Bailey's Irish Cream drinker. Now that's not to say I drink much, I rarely indulge and even then, only when others buy them for me ;-)
• Nothing beats a properly prepared Lucid Absinthe or mug of Mead.
• I'm a WoW gamer, I prefer the bad guys, you know, the Alliance? (I have huntard and Death Knight) keep your friends close, your enemies closer, but I've been gaming since the mid 80's (D&D and Dungeons of Moria, anyone?). SCA/LARP too. MMO gaming since UO beta.
  
• I do love me some role playing! Its fun, stress relief.
• I love Diet Pepsi.
  
• I write for stress relief too, mostly in the form of rants.
  
• I like to party (on occasion), with a limited number of friends but would rather hang out, chat up a storm or just sit back and relax, listening to good music.
• I blog to gripe, for the most part. I let all my frustrations out when I blog. Good therapy, otherwise I'd have to break things.
• Oh, and I love coffee... and Diet Pepsi. Did I mention that already?
  

In other words, I think I'm fairly normal.