31 December 2008

Another Year Gone...

Well, let us all salute 2oo8 as we head into what I'm sure will be a wonderful 2oo9.

So, people have asked if I feel these last 365 days have been productive. Eh, I think so. Let's see...

  • Got myself figured out (woot!) and corrected some habits
  • Started writing more for pleasure than feeling as if I had to
  • Spent time with my family
  • Became organized (wow, never thought that one would ever happen!)
  • Started forming my own clothing line (yes, I did, actually. I just don't have the talent yet.)
  • Started Screaming of the Soul (!!!)

Hopefully 2oo9 will be just as amazing! New Year's Resolutions, anyone?

  • Get in shape (although I believe this is on almost everyone's list...)
  • Be more confident!
  • Start an amazing story - and stay with it (plot lines welcomed with open arms, everyone!)
Well, scream at you all later - I gotta go watch the ball drop

[no, Abby...not our town's. The one in NYC...No Plain White T's for me.]

27 December 2008

Merry Christmas!

Merry belated Christmas everyone! I hope you all got what you asked for and such. ^_^

I know I did! Not a whole lot, but I got what I wanted:
  • Gir [from Invader Zim] slippers
  • Team Edward shirt [finally!]
  • Ugly Dolls 2oo9 Calender
  • Duck Sauce [you'd be amazed how hard it is to find]
  • Heated Mattress Pad [great for the cold!]
  • Borders, Hot Topic and JoAnne's Fabric gift cards
  • mp3 player speakers that light up!
  • Domo-kun keychain
  • Blow up lightsaber that lights up
But the best present of all was my Sears-Kenmore sewing machine. It was originally my grandmother's, but now has been passed to me. It's especially cool because it's vintage and weighs like 45 pounds. Already tried it out and made a pillowcase. Be on the look out for more sewing projects, coming soon!

19 December 2008

Yeah, Presents!







Yeah! So, Dana from shewalkssoftly.com sent my prize out and it just arrived! There's an adorable doe plushie (in my favorite colors!) and a beautiful bracelet. It features pictures from vintage writing supply ads, and is perfect!
It's especially cool that it arrived so close to Christmas! (yeah for early presents!)
Just wanted to tell you all. :D

Snow...


Does anyone know how to make these snowflake thingies out of paper? Tyler made some yesterday, and I really want to make some to add "Christmas Cheer" to the house.
On a side note, Happy (almost, in 6 days) Christmas everyone!

12 December 2008

Questions

I could write for days, weeks, months, years and still never express the truth. I could type forever and never have the right words pass through my fingertips. I could compose music and try to find your perfect song, but all would sound inadequate and childish to the complex melody needed for you.

Is this why I melt when I see you?

Why I can’t think, can’t talk, can’t breath all because your arm is around me? Why I lose whatever sense I may still have whenever you smile at me? How could one person affect another so deeply as to make her forget her own name?

It scares me.

Scary to think I may be weak enough to simply go crazy and forget it all, run away from everything I’ve ever known, just for one person. Scary that I might be involved in something far bigger and more ruthless than I’d ever imagined in my wildest dreams. Scarier then the proverbial monster under the bed.

But not as scary as losing you.

For that would be true fear in its plainest form. My nightmares taunt me with this, showing me our happiest moments and then ripping you from my arms. It’s enough to drive anyone out of their mind, but it scares me more than most.

Why, you ask?

Because I am constantly paranoid. Paranoid that this isn’t real, that it won’t last, that all the pessimistic people around me are right. What if we can’t last?

What if this isn’t real?

But then you smile at me again, and all my fears disappear.

09 December 2008

The Party, Part III

She thinks she sees it.

Something in the glint of his smile, the way his laughter makes her want to join in. Subtle little things, things that make her feel (almost) whole again, after all the months she’s spent alone just trying to pretend that she’ll be okay. He was always outside the circle of drama, and now he had become her rock. Her rock of strength, of unwavering support and humor, of tricks and pranks and any way to make her smile that gorgeous smile of her’s that she seemed to never use now.

And it worked. Miraculously, he had done what they had all tried – he had genuinely come to care for her. She could tell be the certain way his lips quirked up more than usually when he saw her, the way he was always trying to sit closer to her, the way he worried about every little paper cut or bruise she seemed to acquire (and, being a klutz and a fierce hockey player, she got them frequently). It made her want to be better. To not be the annoying, complaining person she seemingly had become.

So she tries.

She tries so hard to better, for him. Everything she does, from tests to the dreaded Mile Run in Phys. Ed., she has to excel in. A 98% isn’t acceptable; she needs to have 100%. Her reasoning? If she isn’t good enough for their stupid tests and even stupider contests, then how can she be good enough for him? How could someone so far down on the totem pole as she be anywhere’s near good enough for him?

It only serves to make his grin a little wider. Silly girl, he wants to say, don’t you know you’re beautiful? He hugs her close, savoring every moment they can share together in this hectic world. The days fly by, and the quicker they go the tighter he holds onto what they have.

He doesn’t want to let go of her.

And she doesn’t want to let the greatest thing in her life slip through her fingertips. Although being timid and shy as she’s become in the past months of solitude, she feels the familiar feeling bubbling in her gut. Impulse. “Do you mind if I love you?” she asks him one day as they lay on the picnic tables and stare into the brilliant blue sky.

Opening a lazy eye with cat-like grace, he regards her with a curious smile on his face. “Do you mind if I love you?” Laughter escapes her lips before she can hold them in, and the curious smile takes on a hint of panic. “What? Did that just sound stupid?”

She thinks it’s the greatest thing she’s heard in a long time.

~

[So it's clear, this take place about 2 to 3 months after Part II.]

The Party, Part II

She trudged the familiar path, feeling more alien than anything else.

Defiantly more alien. The faces around her were crazed and discombobulated; swirls of flesh-colored blobs surrounded by a sea of chaos. What are they? She thought, a small frown on her odd features (they all used to say pixie-little features, but she had to forget that – didn’t she?). The bell sounded three times, a call to classes that lay beyond her understanding for the minute.

And who can focus on classes anyhow, without the added distraction of a slowly crumbling façade of a normal person? Her old shining eyes were just a mask, something to hide the emotions inside her. Who could blame her? They could never accept her, had never. It was made painfully obvious when the party happened. “You live closer,” they said, “he doesn’t have a way home.”

So what? She had thought, instead of vocalizing.

The familiar walls of the school were foreign to her. She coasted through the day on autopilot, not engaging in any of the things that once delighted her. It’s because of them, she tried to convince herself. They are the reason I’m like this. Though even she knows that’s not the whole truth. More precisely, it’s “them-and-me-and-the-whole-world”.

It’s not too enormous a problem, though, and she knows it – even if she wants to deny it even to this day. Why let them control her life, control who she is and how she acts? No one can let anyone do anything to them without their own consent. She could no more force them to make her miserable than she could move a mountain. But it seemed so.

She was alone.

Alone in the truest sense of the word. She had done what needed to be done, and they resented her for it. Called her a traitor, called her a turncoat, called her an immature little girl and told her where she could shove those dreams of her’s. She had, for once in her life, stuck up for herself and look where it got her – alone in the one place she used to feel whole, shuffling from one blur of a class to the next, trying to contain tears that threatened to fall at any moment. (and she had prided herself once on her ability to not show any emotion whatsoever.)

But it was futile. The tears fell silently, no one paying the least bit of attention to her. It was no different then other times, times when similar things had happened to people. The rest of them, the vague shapes she had noticed before, they did nothing. She was avoided like the plague. Those who had cared, they tried to comfort her, but she wouldn’t have any of it. They were shoved away as if an invisible force field surrounded her. Glancing over her shoulder, trying to be discreet, she would see confusion written on their faces.

She saw the hurt in their eyes, and turned to hide the guilt in her’s.

The Party, Part I

She was mad.

That was the first thing she realized as she collapsed halfway to her house. She was mad, and she was scared. The party had been their thing, had been their plan for over a month. Shouldn’t she be there? Didn’t she get priority over that loser?

Tears were falling like an angry storm now, though she tried her best to stop their mighty flow. After everything she’d done, didn’t she deserve to be the one there, dancing between the disco lights and having fun? Did he really have the right to be the one in the spotlight?

And, yet, here she was

It wasn’t like the whole thing was some complicated matter. She’d been invited first, he hadn’t even been on the guest list, but when he found out about the whole thing her best friend couldn’t say no to him (she never had been able to).

Her best friend knew that if he showed up she’d leave. She’d take her stuff and not say another word (which she did). There’d be angry glares, shouted whispers, and a cold walk home. Proof was here, laying in the shadowed gutter, tears streaming down and mixing with the rain. Soaked clothes, shattered spirit, the last straw broken.

She was done.

Hadn’t she tried everything conceivable? She’d tried telling him nicely, shouting, even lengthy notes explaining that he needed to leave her alone, and now…Now she was over it. If he never said another word to her, it would be too soon. Her best friend she could deal with; hopefully help her with her “people-pleaser” nature.

But now it was all for her. She would do whatever it took to get him to realize she was serious. No jokes, no nothing. She was completely done with him, had been for over a year, and he was going to figure it out. Like the blast of reality it was, she would make darn sure he knew exactly how she felt.

She quietly picked herself out of the gutter, knowing what she had to do.

A Mother's Terror

What if you knew that in a matter of minutes your whole world could come crashing down? That those you hold most dear could be ripped from your grasp in an attempt to free them from overwhelming bonds that hold them? That to help them heal, you had to let them go through their own version of hell? That, no matter what you tried, you couldn’t ease the suffering at all?

That’s what I wondered as I held my baby. Emerson Charles Brown, a beautiful boy with an adorably impish grin. I held him in my arms as I had when he was born, 15 years ago. “Baby…Em…I love you.” I managed to gasp out. “It’s gonna be okay, baby,” I soothed as his body started to shake in my embrace, “You’re gonna come out of this just fine. You’re a fighter, a Brown, and don’t you ever forget that.”

He nodded, tears making patterns on his cheeks to match those on mine. “I know, Mama. I know.”

But I could see the terror he was trying to hide. His bright, brilliant green eyes spoke what he wouldn’t. What he couldn’t. Mama, I’m scared. I know the success rate is 90-some, but...well, what if? What if I’m that small percent? What if I lose you?

What if I lose you? is what I want to say. What if I lose my only baby, someone I used to consider a mistake, to something like this?

I know it’s not my place to say anything though. Not to beg him to give up a life of freedom from restraints to ensure his survival. I trust the doctors, I really do, but I don’t trust…well, I just am not 100% sure that my baby’s going to get through this. I tell him I am so he won’t back out, but a small and irrational part of my heart worries.

Emerson was diagnosed at birth as a Type 1 Diabetic. He grew up much like his friends – indulging in cake, sweets, pizza, and everything you or I can eat – with the exception that he had to give himself injections. I started him fairly early on an insulin pump, figuring that one small shot every 3 days or so was better than one every time he ate.

It was a nightmare. Try explaining to your 3 year old why you have to poke him and keep a cord attached into his belly. Constantly, every time I had to change his site, he would ask me what he did wrong. “Mama, what did I do? Why do you keep doing this?” It’s every mother’s nightmare.

So there we sat, waiting in the cold lobby for the surgical team to come collect him. I remembered vaguely our past day of celebration, the headlines crying out about a cure for diabetics. The tears fell like they had that day, only now in fear instead of joy. Of course I was excited for him – he’d get to live a normal life. I was just worrying like mother’s are apt to do.

A small nurse peeked out from behind the huge wooden door. “Emerson Brown?”

I squeezed his hand, pulling him out of the stiff waiting room chair and into my arms again. “I love you, Emerson. Don’t you ever think for one moment that I don’t,” I tried to say without sobbing and failed.

His grin electrified his face. “Don’t worry, Mama. Even if something goes wrong, I’ll be with Dad. And, anyways, I’m going to be fine.” He let the nurse lead him away, and I sat back down.

~

7 hours. That’s how long I had to wait before anyone came out to say a single word to me about my baby. 7 horrible, terrifying, miserable hours spent worrying that every team rushing through the hallways was carrying my boy in tow.

I was awakened from a restless sleep in an uncomfortable chair by a man’s strong grip on my shoulder. “Mrs. Brown?” I heard.

Mumbling a “yes,” I sat up. Realizing quickly where I was and why, I grabbed the doctor by the collar. “Where is Emerson? Is he okay? Did it work? How long is he going to have to stay here? When can I see him?”

He laughed a deep laugh that matched the warmth in his brown eyes. “He’s fine. The surgery went flawlessly, and we expect him out of here in 3 to 5 days at the most. As for when you can see him, come right this way. I’ll bring you there myself.”

I was suddenly surprised to feel arms around me, hugging me tight. He’s gonna be fine, Christina, I hear in my ear.

“Tom?” I breathed, hardly daring to believe. My late husband. I knew it was a figment of my imagination, or whatever else people try to brush those experiences off as, but I let it comfort me just the same.

I squared my shoulders and set off to go see my baby boy: Emerson Charles Brown, survivor.


~~
So, something a bit different, yes? I've been thinking a lot lately (what with President Obama lifting the veto on stem cell research once he gets into office and all) about the future. My future, and that of the millions of other people in the world with Type 1 Diabetes. Wouldn't this be amazing, to be able to cure a disease as awful as that - not to mention the others it would help as well.

Let's hope I get to go through what Emerson did. Go in, be scared (because I will be), but come out...free.

Hm...Interesting

So, it's been drawn to my attention that this has deviated from it's original purpose. Was not this blog started to express writing in it's many forms, instead of posting random and weird quiz results? Interesting...Well, I'm going to fix that!

First off, if you look at the top of the page there are my links. The FanFiction and FictionPress are my personal works, and it's best to leave comments there (I do accept anon. reviews, just put the name you use here on Blogger, in case you don't have an account for either of them.)

I'm going to start posting my stories on there AND here, just so you don't have to check back and forth. Mostly my FictionPress works, though.

~


This is me, taking back what control over this I can.

05 December 2008

Me....

So, I just took a 11 page long personality report. If you have the time, I greatly recommend taking it!

Here's mine: [click]

I'm apparently an "Advocating Dreamer". Funnily enough, I find this to fit quite well.




03 December 2008

I Am.....GREEN LANTERN!!!!


Green Lantern
95%
Spider-Man
90%
Wonder Woman
77%
Robin
70%
Catwoman
70%
Superman
65%
Hulk
65%
The Flash
60%
Iron Man
60%
Batman
50%
Supergirl
47%

Hot-headed. You have strong will power and a good imagination.

Click here to take the "Which Superhero are you?" quiz...

I had a friend take this after I did, and scarily enough he ended being Super Girl. Ha. Hope you all enjoy! Leave me a comment with who you are and how well you think it fits!

24 November 2008

SheWalksSoftly UPDATE!!!

Remember when I told you Screamers about the contest that Dana, webmistress of SheWalksSoftly, was having?!?
Turns out, I WON!!!!!
Thanks to anyone who followed the link through this blog, told any friends about it, or generally was just wonderful. And thanks to my vampiric "brother" T.J. xD

28 October 2008

SheWalksSoftly

Are you all set for Halloween? Still need some spooky ideas for costumes, or just want to see some amazingly weird stuff? Well then why are you still here?!? Go [here] right now!


SheWalksSoftly is an amazing blog that I have followed for quite some time. Dana,
our lovely webmistress, is all about the weird stuff in the world.
From tattoo artists who practice on more than just skin to
spooky art, retro costumes to The Chicken Car, this site has it all!
Why am I telling you about this now? Well, since you asked...
THERE'S A CONTEST!
Dana is having a Mystery Prize Contest. Basically,
People will be rewarded with whoever gets the most people to read the site.
She might shut down if not enough people care. D:
So....
Please go read it. I can almost promise that everyone will find SOMETHING that will interest them.
(And I am dying to know what the Mystery Prize is.)

27 October 2008

Coming Home

A boy around my age walked into the room and all eyes swiveled towards him. He walked part most of the admiring eyes, going instead toward the window in the back of the cafeteria - towards me. He wore neat and obviously new jeans along with an unknown -to me- band's shirt. He held a notebook in one hand and was tucking a book into his pant's pocket. I quickly noticed it was a Peter S. Beagle book, a favorite of mine.
He looked lonely. His dark, stormy blue eyes swept over the cafeteria, moving from one side to the other as if looking for someone. His eyes swept over me and suddenly his face broke into a delighted grin. He loped easily over to me, enveloping me in his long, warm arms. I could smell vanilla and stories past, while I heard him whisper, "Ah, there you are."
And I felt like I'd finally come home.
~
Wrote this for a descriptive writing excerise in English. What do you think?

20 October 2008

Wolf

You're a wolf in sheep's clothing
you grace me with your lies
for to show me the truth
would be to burn my eyes

You're a wolf in sheep's clothing
You've been one from the start
And soon your dark secrets
Will eradicate my heart

But for now, show me your mercy. Delay my pain
and lie to me again.



Written by my friend, T.J. He doesn't think it's that good, but I beg to differ! What do you Screamers think?

16 October 2008

Welcome

~Hey~

Some of you might now us from Inkspots.
Well we left Crossroads (yay!)
BUT
we had to leave Inkspots behind for the next generation.
):

So, here we are!
We hope to have a bunch of new stuff up from the summer
and for you to enjoy asap!

Meanwhile...
MY sites are still up and running.
Check them out at:
and