romance

Valentine’s Day 2019 Gifts – Lots of Unicorns!

| marandarussell

I had a good Valentine’s Day yesterday!

52571362_2146975285341217_6347290007912316928_n

My husband and I went to Fazoli’s for a casual dinner because we just don’t find it worth it to go to nice restaurants on Valentine’s Day when it is so ridiculously busy and packed. We will go to a nice dinner in a few days when it is calmer lol.

I loved all the gifts I got! As you can tell, there was a unicorn theme! Lots of stuffed unicorns, a unicorn & mermaid coloring book, adorable sloth and donut socks, chocolate covered strawberries, and and awesome gudetama notebook and bananya (cats in bananas) pen.

Advertisements

Valentine Sticker ACEO Trading Card Collages

| marandarussell

Happy Valentine’s Day! I bought some Valentine stickers at Dollar Tree recently and decided to make some ACEO collages with them. Here are the finished results:

DSC08830

DSC08831

DSC08833

My favorites are the food themed ones. I thought those were really unusual for Valentine’s themed stickers. I always like to find the weird, different stuff!

You can find these and more for sale on my Ebay store!

Twittering Tales Fun

| marandarussell

I came across these “Twittering Tales” writing prompts yesterday and thought it looked like a lot of fun. The challenge is to take a photo prompt and write a short story, poem, or whatever comes to mind, but you have to keep it under 280 characters, just like a tweet on Twitter. I decided to go ahead and write a twittering tale for last week’s prompt as well as this week’s prompt.

Here is the one I came up with for last week’s prompt (photo from Pixabay):

baker-bakery-baking-890520

Hearts and stars. Hearts and stars. Simple shapes that any preschool child could identify, but symbolic of so much more.

The heart…love, obsession, passion, heartwarming, heartbreaking, blood pumping.
The star…cosmic, mysticism, alchemy, popularity, holidays, holy days.

And here is the second prompt (photo also from Pixabay). This one took a bit of a dark turn, but it was what came to mind for some reason:

classic-1834499_1280-1

It starts with one word:

Helium. A harmless word? Parties. Balloons floating around the room. Rough, gruff voices becoming chipmunk squeaks.

Or do you picture tragedy? Helium tanks hooked up to hoses. Bodies lying still with bags over their heads. Voluntary euthanasia. The end.

Let me know if you guys enjoyed these. Maybe I’ll do more!

Poetry – Lovers Movie Night

| marandarussell

movie-918655_960_720

Lovers Movie Night
By: Maranda Russell

He leans over to grab a magazine.

“People like you are so annoying,”
she sniffs disdainfully.

“People like me?”
he asks as he reclines back
and settles in to read.

Soon, he feels a tiny foot
wiggle over to nudge his shin.

“Why pay to see the movie then?”
she mutters
with a deeply pained sigh.

“What movie?”

…..

“I hate you.”

I Survived the Birthday Party!

| marandarussell
43055723_2146005315433816_1342013083400273920_n
Just a few of the leftover treats!

A few of you seemed like you wanted an update about how my husband’s birthday party went yesterday (if you didn’t read my post yesterday, you can find it here). Most of the really bad nerves happened before the party and on the way there, which is pretty normal for me. I had an IBS attack about a half hour before leaving the house (nausea, diarrhea, cramps – the whole shebang). On the drive to the party, I noticed my right leg was shaking pretty bad (a sure sign of anxiety), which made driving even more uncomfortable.

However, once I arrived at the school, it didn’t go too bad. Checking in at the front office wasn’t nearly as scary as I had imagined, although the receptionist was kind of grumpy. They had me stay in the office until the party was ready, as they wanted to surprise my husband. When they were ready, I joined the kids in my husband’s class and his assistants on their way back to the classroom from music class. We all got to my husband’s classroom and sang Happy Birthday to him and had some cupcakes. There was a ton of other food there as well – a huge assortment of candy, an amazing cream cheese peanut butter cake, chocolate covered pretzels, chips and salsa, and more.

Meeting my husband’s assistants (and a few other school employees) went ok. They were nice and friendly, although I did feel pretty shy. I had to ask my husband a few times if they were kidding or not when they said certain things, because I genuinely have a hard time deciphering whether people I don’t know well are being sarcastic or for real when they talk. One of the highlights of the party was meeting one student’s therapy dog. Meeting people fills me with anxiety, but meeting animals is always pure joy! I also got a couple hugs from my husband’s students, which was sweet.

After the party I was definitely relieved to get back home, but proud that I went. I know it meant a lot to my husband, so it was worth it.

My Mother Helped a Guy to Stalk Me

| marandarussell

binoculars-2474698_960_720

Lately I’ve been dealing with a lot of resentment and anger towards my mother. To explain why, let me share a specific incident that kind of illustrates why I am upset.

When I was 14/15, my mother worked with a guy named Danny who met me and developed a huge crush on me. He was in his late teens or early twenties, but was definitely an adult already. I DID NOT share his romantic interest and made that plain. I had absolutely no interest in dating him or getting to know him better. He bought me an expensive bracelet as a gift, which I immediately returned to him to make it clear I wasn’t interested.

Even with my mother knowing how I felt and that I was stressed out by the attention, she actually egged him on in spite of how I felt or what I wanted. She even gave him our home address and told him when I would be home. So, he ended up coming to my house while I was there alone and banged on the door and called my name for what felt like forever. He yelled about how he knew I was home because my mom had told him so. I never answered the door or responded to his calls. In fact, I hid in the closet because I was scared at the aggressiveness he was displaying.

I felt like I was being stalked, and worst of all, my own mother was encouraging it. This is just one small incident that portrays an issue with boundaries and respecting my privacy that was even more disturbing in other ways which perhaps I will share someday if and when I am ready to do so. I know it might sound odd, but I almost have a feeling like my mother WANTED to whore me out for some reason. I can’t even describe what that did to me psychologically.

I Could Have Been Labeled a Terrorist

| marandarussell
050317-N-6628F-031
Public Domain Image

Sometimes I feel like I live in an entirely different world than the one I grew up in. One thing I am greatly thankful for is that there wasn’t the sensitivity to threats of violence or stupid immature outbursts when I was a kid and teen. I think about how common it was when I was a kid to joke about “blowing up the school” when you were mad, or how easily we threw around the “I’m going to kill you!” threat. Of course, we didn’t really mean it, to us, it was just a way to express frustration…but if kid me were to make those comments today in school, I would likely be taken away in handcuffs.

I also think about a stupid reaction I had as a teenager to a betrayal by someone I had a huge crush on. This person I had a crush on had been sort of leading me on and making me think that we might have a future together. We worked together at Burger King, and he was a few years older than me, but probably not much more grown up. When I found out that he had been lying to me and was secretly in a romantic relationship with someone else we worked with, I was SUPER PISSED. Both of these people I worked with had pretty much lied right to my face about their relationship numerous times and one day at work I simply went off.

Everyone else was gossiping about their affair and I was pulled into the conversation. Several knew how I had felt about him and asked if I planned to do anything. Being someone who was viciously angry and has always had a dark sense of humor, I said maybe I should go set their house on fire with them inside. Then I remembered that the girl had a daughter and I corrected myself by saying I would make sure I got the little girl out first. It was a dark joke. Clearly not something I intended to do, just a way to let off steam. I have often thought though that if that were to happen in our world’s current climate, I seriously could have been arrested for making terrorism threats.

It is these memories I revisit when I see stories about kids getting expelled or investigated for making pretend guns out of Pop-Tarts, shouting something in anger, or making pretend shooting motions with their fingers. I think of how stupid and immature I used to be and how I lacked the wisdom to see the potential consequences of a rash, snide comment or playful dark humor. I certainly understand our world’s over-sensitivity to these things today, but I can’t help but think of how naively innocent I once was when I would foolishly spout off without thinking it through.

Vacations: A Harsh Reality of Chronic Illness

| marandarussell

33400748_1959360390764977_2132777392215687168_n

Over the weekend my husband and I took a short vacation to Louisville, KY to celebrate our 15th anniversary and spend some quality time together. I did have a good time, but I must admit that I dread and sometimes even regret vacations just as much as I look forward to them.

Why? Simple. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Vacationing when you have CFS sucks. Big time. Planning the vacation wears you out. Packing wears you out. The travel wears you out. Even though I don’t do the driving, I am still exhausted by the time we even get to our destination. Often, as soon as we get to our hotel I immediately have to lay down for at least a couple hours to recuperate, even if it is only a 2 or 3 hour drive as this one was.

The main excursion we planned was to the Louisville zoo. We had never been there before and both my husband and I love animals. Luckily, it wasn’t a huge zoo, but by the time we had toured about half of it, I was in really poor shape. I had to sit on each bench we came by and rest. I even had to make do with the floor a few times and just collapsed. I was nauseated, felt like passing out, developed a migraine-like headache, and felt extremely overheated, even though it wasn’t that hot out and I stayed hydrated. Heck, most of the buildings were even air conditioned. THIS is what living with CFS is like.

I didn’t get to see much of the rest of the zoo. I was too busy looking for places to rest and recuperate for the trek back to the car. My legs ached so badly and felt so weak that I feared they would give out on me multiple times. My entire body felt like I had been run over or slammed into by something big and heavy. Somehow I did make it back to the car (after resting many, many times on the way there), and then we went directly to our hotel so I could recuperate for the rest of the day. I didn’t even have the stamina to go out for dinner a few hours later, so we ate at the hotel.

I went to bed early, hoping I would feel better in the morning, which didn’t really happen. The next day we visited a cool indie bookstore I had wanted to go to, but I was almost too tired to even enjoy that. We went and found a place by the Ohio River to sit and watch barges pass by, which was peaceful and relaxing. During the drive times to our locations, I curled up with a pillow and laid my seat back to doze.

By the time we headed back for home, I was too exhausted to care about much of anything. When we arrived home, I went almost straight to bed, even though it was only 5pm. The next day (Labor Day), my hip and back were so sore (with a pinched nerve thrown in), that I spent most of the day laying in bed watching a Lake Placid marathon on the Syfy Channel. Any form of movement was excruciating.

All of this makes me wonder if vacations are really worth the trouble. It also makes me wonder if maybe sometime soon I will need to get a motorized chair to even survive simple outings like this. I hate to give in and do that, but my worsening symptoms make it an almost certain possibility eventually.