If I had to describe myself, it would be in a word that has many meanings with a complexity which falls off the tongue. A word made up of many elements, is deceptive in appearance, and creates an illusion from the imagination. My word would be Phantasmagoric. ~Summer Ross
What a day! Pixie dust couldn't have provided a better outcome for a little girls eggsperimental birthday! You should have seen 10 ready made children sprouting imaginary wings as they flew out the back door on the scavenger hunt for a glass bottle and an egg.
Then rush back in to light paper on fire drop it in the bottle, set the egg on top and see which one gets to the bottom first! What a race, in first place the two boys took off at about a minute lead, but shelling a hard boiled egg was a little trickier than they anticipated.
Next up the birthday girl and her team mate, just when you think they will win the egg stops halfway down.
The boys team is still waiting for theirs to drop, then the younger teams rush in! Team three has a hard time getting the paper lit, and team four doesn't have their egg shelled yet.
Birthday girl team egg has looked to be stopped, the boys have to restart their fire and woosh coming up from last place team three as their egg dunks down to the bottom of the jar! what a race! what an experiment! what a learning experience!
Jasmyne recieved so many wonderful gifts, one of her favorites being the guitar she has requested two years in a row!
The cake was an fun experience, can you imagine three adults trying to figure out how to use a bright pink squeeze easy bag to write happy birthday and glitter art, how many people does it take to decorate one cake answer- 3 honestly LOL!
My oldest- Jasmyne Turns 9yrs old today! We are celebrating her birthday with friends and Science experiments. (She is a science fair buff won 2nd place in last years school science fair). Anyway we are racing to drop a boiled egg into a jar, first team to get it to the bottom wins! I'm taking lots of pictures so I will post a couple this evening.
Guess what she is fairy excited about? ----> She no longer has to sit in a carseat! YAYNESS.
Okay- there are a lot of important lessons I have learned over the years:
--If a child says she's going to be sick, get a trash can.
--Kittens don't always know how to use a litter box, and scaring them with dogs means poo down the front of you. (my guy is great for this)
--laughing is great medicine as long as it isn't used for tummy surgery
But I think the hardest thing to learn has been for me to believe in myself. Its painful to walk into a college class with 20 other students at least six years or more younger than you. Its gut wrenching when the professor calls on you and you don't know the answer but some 19 year old pops off right quick with it.
Of course going through these tedious hardships are how lives are spent, but being able to believe I can has been a truly hard lesson, and one I am still working on for every final test I have to take to reach my goals.
I shuffled my way through random things online when suddenly a thought occurred to me: Stories in 6 words or less. Ernest Hemingway has a famous short story that he claimed was his best work and most people have read it, gazed at it, memorized it, wrote from it, and have heard of it in one way or another.
Its simple really, here it is: "For Sale: baby shoes, never worn." Thinking on this, originally I thought it sounded too much like an ad, however on further pondering I have decided it is rather brilliant. Think of everything it doesn't say. So what happened? Post it in comments if you'd like to.
Here are some other shorts I have found for your hopefully amused reading pleasure.
Failed SAT. Lost scholarship. Invented rocket.
- William Shatner
Longed for him. Got him. Shit.
- Margaret Atwood
Batman Sues Batsignal: Demands Trademark Royalties.
- Cory Doctorow
Nevertheless, he tried a third time.
- James P. Blaylock
Finally, he had no more words.
- Gregory Maguire
Gown removed carelessly. Head, less so.
- Joss Whedon
Well to start I had an amazing time down in Cheyenne for Frontier Days. The shops are antique and worth a view.
They have vendors clear down from Texas up in these here Wyoming parts, just to trade some goods.
No really when you walk into one of these "General stores" you feel like you've been dropped back into trading posts and the wild west. Though there is no real trading other then the green for the items, but they have furs, saloon dresses, hand made knives out of bone, quill pens even! And since I am a pen collector- guess what I bought? *cheezy grin*
So what I really went there for was, of course, the Brooks and Dunn "last rodeo" tour. Now I must admit I am very impressed with how things went. They truly do up amazing concerts. Now for the details:
Get this- I was f-i-v-e feet away from their stage, standing in a VIP area with my uncle who is one of their drivers. My grandmother, me, my guy, and my neice Ivy and my nephew Tiger are standing in this barred area when all of a sudden we turn to the right because it sounds like a heard of elephants have been let loose. It was close- a bunch of screaming fans came running in so hard they squished themselves up to the bars before they could come to a halt and tons more are running in behind the first ones. It was like one of those funny movie scenes where a guy is running from screaming women down the street. Not more than twenty minutes later we look to our left and its a zoo in there! all of them screaming and running in, plus the other ones screaming. Yikes, eardrums- well I used to have them...
Its dark before Brooks and Dunn get on stage, but I can hear again by the time they do, which is a huge plus because they have amazing voices! They of course sang all the crowd favorites. They even had one of each kind of soldier come out and stand on stage as they sang "Only in America". About half way through the song these red, white, and blue streamers popped out over the crowd surprising us.
I was pretty impressed with how my niece and nephew reacted to the concert. Tiger is 8 and Ivy is 6 years old, and here it was almost midnight and they are just as excited to be at the concert as they were when we first got there. LOL kids are resilient creatures! But now my little niece Ivy is more than resilient, I'm pretty sure she has a complex! A Brooks complex that is, because on their last song they picked Ivy out from the front and Brooks brought up to the stage and danced with her!
That pink jacket made her stand out, because after the concert everyone knew who she was, and told her how famous she was because she danced with Brooks onstage of their last tour. So you know what my little niece looks up and says to me? Dead serious she looks up and says "Aunt Summer, does that make me his partner?" My reply was "For that dance yes." and I'm almost certain she will remember that til the day she dies.
I'll end with a few more pictures for your viewing pleasure. Have a great day everyone!
Brooks and Dunn will be in Cheyenne for frontier days this weekend, and it's their last tour. My grandmother and I got VIP'd to the concert- which should be amazing, but also evidently we will have our own "body guards" My grandmothers reply to this of course was "Make sure he's cute" LOL So this will be an interesting outing. I leave tomorrow morning at 8am. We plan on going to the fair down their with my niece and nephew, then the concert is Saturday night. I'm getting a signed autograph for one of my good friends who can't go to the concert. I'll keep it posted on how it goes...
I have been reading a lot of Patricia Briggs recently. I currently finished her fourth book "Bone Crossed" in her Mercy Thompson series. As I finished I learned something about what I like to read and what I would one day like to write: I like classy sassy female characters in what I read and admire them almost as if I strive to bring my own characters up to that level.
In nearly every author I read there has to be a witty female as at least one main female. Kim Harrison is one of my favorite authors not only because of her leading female but also because of the pixie who is rude and funny.
And there could be that small part of my inner self connects with these characters because of their wit, morals, and charm.
Before this paper that my current Chemistry professor had me research, I didn't really have a stand on Global warming. However I have a stand now after reading this paper. What to pay attention to: check out information on Willie Soon. Pay close attention the the graphs given and how far apart their mean and median are, check out statistics and graphs if you don't understand them. They have a very good paper here and a very different outlook. One even worth considering. Just because its different doesn't make it wrong, judge based off facts.
Here is the link: http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p36.htm
I have been smoking regular cigarettes for fifteen years. While I have no real want to quit at this time for my own reasons, I do want something that could sustain my cravings, not harm those around me, or even me as much, and does not cost an arm and a leg to try out, let alone use regularly if needed. I found e-cigarettes. I am very petite and my body doesn’t take kindly to the gum for quitting or the patches, I tend to throw up a whole lot and its not appealing to me at all. So I saw these and tried them out.
I have attempted to find both the good and the bad included for the e-cigarettes and while some of this has been more difficult because e-cigarettes are relatively new, I still see drastic improvements to regular smoking of paper cigarettes.
I do not plan to go into heavy details of all of this, what I do want is there to be an option for those who want it. Isn’t that what the US is all about anyway? It seems there is a huge fear of change going on at the moment, heated with the FDA and the common e-cigarette companies Njoy and Smoking everywhere. They go to court in September.
Here are some things I would like to point out:
Read and research for yourself if you are a smoker or e-cigarette user.
Smoking no matter what form is a hazard, but which is the lesser of two evils? In addition, as a person I would prefer to take the lesser of these two since I am no where near able to quit at this time.
Take some things into consideration- even if you are not a smoker- like for example the fact that the second hand smoke is almost non existent. It’s a vapor in e-cigarettes much like a fogger.
The yellow stains on walls and the residue build up- is no longer there. That cuts down on maintenance costs for homeowners or landlords.
I am not saying there are not risks, but I do not think the FDA or anyone else should cut the people short because they are afraid of the change and what it might do. The risk of children smoking these is no higher than the cigarettes in paper form, only the paper form is much easier for them to get a hold of since they happen to be everywhere.
Please look through the sites I have found and research your own and decide for yourself what to do. There is also a petition site at the end of the links for e-cigarettes, not against. Please read these carefully. Links: electronic cigarettes whats up with the FDA? FDA/ tobacco bill New law results What the FDA warns petition
I was 16 yrs old when one of my male friends raped me. July 21st of 1997. I remember going into the police station in Evansville and as I sat in the room, the officer in front of me requested the clothes from evidence I had given. He gave me a yellow piece of notebook paper to write my statement on. Another uniformed man came in with my sack of clothes and handed them to the officer. Upon looking at the garments he said “No wonder you were raped, you asked for it,” he referred to my cut off teal tank top and regular blue jeans. This leads me to the topic of my presentation, child sexual abuse and its effects. Child sexual abuse, historically and presently, contains heavy emphasis on blaming the victim. This removes the blame from society and is present in the modern writing world.
“Child sexual abuse simply was not acknowledged prior to the late 1800’s,” (Bolen, 12). Historically, child abuse was seen as an imagination-orientated story. People who claimed to be abused, even children, were labeled hysteric. During the later part of the 1800’s Sigmund Freud researched the idea of child sexual abuse. He had patients that claimed to be sexually abused by family members and he wrote a theory called Theory of Seduction discussing his thoughts in attempts to help those labeled with hysterics. However, Freud’s’ peers disagreed with him and could not fathom the idea that Freud believed his patients and so they denied his research and would not allow it to publish.
Freud in reaction, went back over his research and found it faulty denying his belief in his patients and wrote a new paper that would, from that point in time to present day, change the social outlook on child sexual abuse. Freud’s new theory was called the Oedipus complex, “by blaming the victim, the social environment could then be held blameless,” which basically, is what every one knows as “penis envy” (Bolen, 19).
However, the reaches of his theory went far beyond a simple make up on paper, or just what society made acceptable “the researchers commented on the “clearly seductive style” (p.82) of one participant victim, a six year old girl who had been forced to masturbate her father since she was 2 yrs of age,” (Bolen, 28). It was clearly believed that a child could seduce an adult. The guilt and shock value of what all of this did impede on every victims conscience from late 1800 and forward. This new theory set the stage for every health provider, every family, and became the social standard until the 1970’s.
The 1970 has provided America with a great number of things: political awareness, some liberty of women, hippie culture, environmentalists, black hole theories, pocket calculators, microwave ovens, and finally self-awareness. Self-awareness came with the Feminists, which are who brought child sexual abuse back into the public eye. Only they did not question why it happened, but why it was not happening more by males. With self-awareness came self-help and interventions, which provided the realization that child sexual abuse happens and children need to be helped, only it did not change the social mentality of the abuse “some professionals continue to consider the victim partially culpable for the abuse,” (Bolen, 29). Medical providers and families still saw it as the victims fault. Child sexual abuse was a point of shame on the victim.
This social standard created by Freud and stuck to by the rest of the country has minimalized child sexual abuse and taken a taboo topic completely out of view until it recently had the breakthrough in the 1970’s. Despite the fact that child sexual abuse came into a forefront, it still remains a subject that leaves society guilt free and the victims very troubled. Children who have been sexually abused are not labeled as only those in poverty or less fortunate in life. The effects of this type of abuse is not only the victims to bare but also the parent of those who have been abused “all the women parenting sexually abused children self-identified as having been sexually abused in childhood,” (Tilly/Caye, 135).
Child sexual abuse reaches out past families, passed workers, and passed immigration; it reaches into the literary world. Child abuse arises among the very women many look up to who write fiction and poems. Women who are published in schoolbooks of anthologies. According to Nancy Tilly and Joanne Caye, “Writing fosters emotional depth and allows access to emotions not accessible otherwise ”(Tilly/Caye, 132).
There are numerous writers who have spoken on this topic, there are books published to this day on coping skills and methods for parents and others to try. However, to boil it down, being able to express the feelings and the acts itself are a great use to certain people. In a piece on Anne sexton and confessions Deryn Rees-Jones states, “The poem allows what the reader is forbidden: it puts into words the unspeakable, the unsayable” (Rees-Jones, 284). The written word can be a powerful tool in not only coping with child sexual abuse, but a way to show the world it still needs to be heard. This reinforces that society needs to look, needs to observe, and needs to read. Child sexual abuse is no longer dormant, as Freud had encouraged. It is not as taboo as it once was, change inevitably happens.
Virginia Woolf wrote a piece called “A sketch of the past” which shows some of the effects of child sexual abuse and emphasizes a clear thought on how it feels, “I can remember how I hoped that he would stop; how I stiffened and wriggled as his hand approached my private parts,” (Ideology and fiction-175). This quote intertwines what Freud touched briefly on before turning the tables and catches society by the jaw forcing people to look and shows how powerful an image writing can create for the reader. Change must come before this kind of abuse can be fixed after so long of denial. Even when the world does not want to acknowledge its presence. “Perhaps the most important effect of blaming mothers, daughters, or families, then, is that doing so colludes with our societal need to deny the scope of the problem of child sexual abuse,” (Bolen, 33). So far blaming the victim or the families has only given people the misconception of reality and caused a much greater grief in survivors, guilt.
Sources: Works cited
Bolen, Rebecca Morris. Child Sexual Abuse Its Scope and Our Failure. New York:
Kluwer Academic/Plenum, 2001. Print.
Dalgarno, Emily. "Ideology into Fiction: Virginia Woolf's "A Sketch of the Past""
(2010). Rpt. in 175-95. Web.
Rees-Jones, Deryn. ""Consorting with Angels: Anne Sexton and the Art of Confession."
Rev. of Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters. 283-84. Web. 28 Apr. 2010.
Tilly, Nancy, and Joanne Caye. "Using Writing and Poetry to Achieve Focus and Depth
in a Group of Women Parenting Sexually Abused Children." Web. 28 Apr. 2010.
