Check It Out!

Oh let me tell you a story. It is a story of a young woman, enamored with reading. Compulsive reading. Reading everything she could get her hands on, even bus timetable schedules when she didn't' have anything else to read. A woman whose Amazon wishlists extend to 30+ pages of books and movies, on both the .ca and .com sites. A woman who actually budgets money every month for books, even if she desperately needs clothes and can't afford them.
Enter this woman's birthday the past September (ok, ok, I know it took me a while, but at least I'm getting there now!). And enter one of the greatest creations known to human-kind.
The Kindle.
I have to say, I wasn't sure I wanted a Kindle. I like the feel of paper beneath my hands. I like to crack the spine that first time the book is opened and smell the paper. I even like the smell of certain library books. You know the smell, kind of musty and dusty, the smell that tells you it's an oldie but goodie. Makes you want to sneeze and read more.
But, I have to say, I have now filled more than 4 extra large bookshelves, even doubling, and in some cases, tripling books on shelves to get them all to fit.
And my VISA was threatening to disown me. Or give me a crown in honour of the interest I give them each month before paying off in full (jerks).
Brennan got me a Kindle for my birthday. Nothing crazy, just the entry level model with keyboard and 4" (or something) screen and a case, but I have to say it is amazing. I took it right outside (This was when temperatures were consistently in t-shirt level and the sun shone brightly, lulling us into a false sense of eternal summer) and the thing worked beautifully. No reflections, no having to shield my eyes from blinding white paper, and it is LIGHT. The case does add a bit of weight, but when reading outside, or in bed, when your hands start to get a little heavy and you just want to rest a read, the case comes off easily and the Kindle is so light you can read so much longer. Not to mention that, with no backlight, you won't interrupt your body's natural sleep hormones and you'll sleep better than if you'd read a backlit e-book. It is simply amazing.
Oh, and did I mention you can get literally thousands of free e-books? Classics like Bronte, Shakespeare, Austen and more. FREE. *insert evil giggle here* My VISA is going to get awfully lonely. I've been reading for at least an hour every day since I got my Kindle, and I haven't spent a PENNY! I've been reading Anne of Green Gables series (don't laugh, they're good), Jane Austen, Catharine Parr Trail, and so many more... FREE.
I looked at my wishlists, and realized that by downloading the e-versions of some of these books for free I've actually paid for the Kindle already. Most of the print versions cost anywhere from 2-20$ each and I've got them for free.
Highly recommended if you're looking for an e-reader of high quality.
And I've got one, nah nah nah boo boo! :P

I Made Beads!

~A Few of the Beads~

Today being Sunday, I normally take time to rest and do something fun, like gardening or reading. Today, I was sore and thought that the best way to deal with it was to learn something that I'd wanted to try for a while: making polymer clay beads. I ended up making a bunch of cool beads with blue and white polymer clay in a few designs. I made some spiraled corkscrew beads, some round beads and 2 that are going to remain a (birthday) surprise in case certain people are reading my blog. I have glazed them and I'm waiting for them to dry so i can make cool stuff with them tomorrow - I can't wait! I'm sore and exhausted, but I don't care, because I made beads! How cool is that?
That's all for now,
Meghann

Soul's Calling?

I watched the movie Juno last night. For those of you who haven't seen it, it's about a 16 year old girl who gets pregnant and decides to give the baby up for private adoption. Many things happen, but basically the woman who so desperately wants Juno's child gets it, Juno doesn't have to have an infant, and so can be a 'normal' teen again, and we are all left wondering if things actually can turn out that happily in the end. As I am only 25, it also got me thinking about my own life and if I'll ever want, I mean really want a child of my own.
My fiance and I agreed quite early on in our relationship that if we ever did want a child we would adopt - my family's history of horrendous pregnancies, combined with my food allergies and Fibromyalgia would probably combine to create the most miserable pregnancy and sick child on the planet. If it survived. So every once in a while I check myself and see if I want to take that next step and start the adoption process with my fiance (we're actually common law for 6-1/2 years, getting married more to make it official than anything).
I do have to admit that once in a while I see my friends with their children, or see strangers with their children and wonder: could I do that? Do I want to do that? The answer is yes, and also definitely not, for the following reasons:

• I don't have the finances, first off. I love making jewellery, and my website, www.littlestudio.ca does well for what it is, but not well enough to support myself, let alone another person to feed, clothe, enter in sports, etc. It is costing more and more for everything these days, and to properly care for a child is becoming astronomical (by that I don't mean a mountain of toys and cell phones before they are 6, I mean sports teams, and averagely priced clothes and shoes as soon as they outgrow them, and bicycles and museum trips, and lots of fun and educational books).
• I don't have the health (obviously), and having my mom and friends, and my fiance say they would help doesn't alleviate that thought, because at the end of the day, I would be the child's mother, and there is no substitution for that. I want to be the kind of mom that mine was - and is - by being there: Having fun, playing games, running around shouting nonsense at invisible people, baking and crafting for hours, and I can't even do that on my own now.
• I don't know that I am emotionally ready for the responsibility of another person's life. Not just the physical needs - I know I could feed, bathe and protect the child from physical harm. No, it is the emotional needs that scare me. Being responsible for instilling morals, values, and dealing with all the emotional issues that children have to deal with, protecting them from the emotional harm that this world seeks to inflict on innocents....it terrifies me. Really.
• Ok, ok, I'll admit it, I'm selfish - I like my space and quiet. Being sick means that I spend all my time fighting and fighting this disease and so little time on me - spending a few hours reading or making jewellery is like a vacation from all the pain. I need quiet and stillness and me time, and I hardly get that as it is.

So there you have it, I guess I know deep down that I'm not ready for that kind of challenge, maybe I never will be. Does that bother me? Honestly? I'm not sure. Looking at it objectively, I am glad that I know I am unable to care for a child at this point and not proceed down that road any further. But that is logic, and does that whole 'biological clock' thing listen to reason? Is my clock ticking? I dunno, but for now, and for the foreseeable future, it'll have to continue doing just that. I'm not ready and that is all there is to it!

I hope that gets your brain going!

Take care, happy thinking!

Meghann

Distraction is the Best Medicine

So someone asked me the other day how I deal with the constant, unrelenting pain of Fibro, and I really had to stop and think. I'm not taking any medication at the moment (the Cyclobenzaprine was doing some nasty things to my digestive tract and not helping the muscle cramping at all). This now brings the total to somewhere around $900 in wasted meds over the last 6 months that haven't done a thing but make me sicker, the pain has been getting worse over the last 2 months, I'm absolutely broke and stressed and really sick of the whole situation.
So Pain Management? Not really. Pain distraction? ABSOLUTELY!! The only way I've found to manage the pain, not to mention the whole host of other symptoms that come with this disease, is to distract myself. Here are some of the things I do:
1 - I love to cook and bake to suit my many food allergies, and I've now started a blog called Low Allergy Kitchen, you can find that here at: www.lowallergykitchen.blogspot.com and my aim is to help others manage their food sensitivities too. I have a cookbook that I am trying to get published, or I'll do it myself, again to share the knowledge I've gleaned while trying to ignore my Fibromyalgia.
2 - I also love to make jewellery. Since I've been unable to work since November 2007, I've started selling my jewellery as a business, not just a side-hobby/obsession. I have a website where I sell my jewellery at www.littlestudio.ca or you can read my jewellery blog at: www.meglittlestudio.blogspot.com where I describe the methods and inspiration behind the pieces I make.
3 - I love to read. Fantasy is great (LOTR, Inheritance, Harry Potter), Crime is awesome (Dick Francis anyone?), and of course, Non-Fiction is just superb (Cookbooks, Gardening, Jewellery, you get the idea).
4 - I love to garden. Though I can't do as much as I used to, being in tune with our planet is very humbling. Seeing birds grow up in my backyard and return year after year is incredible and puts things into perspective - sure I'm sick, but I don't have to hunt for food, travel thousands of miles each year to get to a warmer climate to survive, build a new house every six months, fight for my life every second of every day, and procreate whether I want to or not (I think my species will still survive if I don't). Makes me feel almost lucky.
5 - I love to exercise. Sure, it's painful, and there are times I'm crying on my exercise bike, but it helps the pain. There are days I can't exercise. There are days I can't even think of exercising, but when I can, I do. It's incredible how yoga makes me happy. I'm still a stark beginner, but yeah, I'm hooked.
Distraction really is the best medicine. Nothing else works anyway! I try to stay positive and distract myself as much as possible, and if that doesn't work, I'll sleep! Or watch Katherine Hepburn or Humphrey Bogart movies - they're always awesome!
Take care, I send you happy thoughts!
Meghann