2 months

nearly two months have passed since i last posted and no matter how hard i try i seem to fall into a deeper darker place. I am becoming a shell of what i used to be.

Travelling on....

So illness-wise i've been pretty poorly.....so i've had a lot of time to catch up on all the things i don't get to do so often, like catching up on graphic novels, playing on my xbox (which i had forgotten how much I enjoy). I've damaged my foot, so i've had to make the decision to pull out of the Jane T 10k. But I have still the 5k and the shine half-marathon to prepare and look forward to.....

I decided to design a soap to sell to raise money for cancer research along with my fundraising for the events, but also design a ME soap to raise money for one of the ME research charity's of which I've not decide yet. I was inspired by Chlay, who is doing tons to raise the awareness of CFS/ME........
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3ZJ6gcy_Hc

I have lots of interest in my soap and i really want to get some markets done and dusted after being let down over a few markets recently. I believe that you should explore every opportunity that you are inspired to follow, and should never be held back of fear of it not working. I don't want to be one of those people, for who the highlight of the week is saturday night TV on ITV. I mean my ex was like that, great people, him and his family.....but the key thing that stuck in my mind was that in reality he wasn't happy because he had nothing to aspire to and being forced to watch Ant and Dec, Harry Hill.......even the memory makes me want to rip out my eyes, brain and ears. Don't even mention going out on a saturday night ! Never happened ! He drank every night for something to do, and watched every soap and every quiz show on ITV possible. I have had an aversion to ITV ever since, because that is just so not me. And i'll never grow up and fit into a white picket fence, desperate housewives mould. If that what you want for life.....go for it.......but for me it's not enough........it's my idea of HELL !!!!

Therapy......

Today, I awoke to find that I couldn't damn move and was in a lot of pain and had that horrible exhausted feeling in the masses today, so in bed still :( hey ho. It is getting easier to stay positive though at the moment. I had a difficult weekend trying to find a companion for Ella, my cat. Kiko who I'd had for six years was a therapy cat. We got him from the RSPCA Bradford and he was company on all those poorly days. Although I am a major Cat lady anyway, Kiko was therapeutic because he was always there as company when I was ill, without me needing to make the effort to entertain someone. I think it's easy to underestimate how much a pet can provide a better quality of life for people with long-term illnesses. He sadly died of FIP suddenly 6 weeks ago, and the house is just empty without him. Ella my other cat, who is only 3, is quite distressed and clingy. She cries a lot and that isn't like her. Ella is so soft and I find stroking her really soothing when i'm in pain. She's like a big, cuddly teddy bear, she has gone from being an independent cat, to never leaving my side, wanting to sleep holding on to me with her paw and trying to wash my hand all the time, all signs that she is lonely. I went to the RSPCA on saturday and found them to be so rude, and seeings that kiko must have caught FIP when he was there, unsympathetic. I was quite distressed as they had said that a cat i liked was suitable and she would have been perfect and suddenly on saturday despite 30 years of having pets from the RSPCA, it would appear I am not good enough. This is my second bad experience with them. They are turning down good homes. For a saturday the centre was empty and dead. Anyways moving on to positive ground.....

I have spent some time designing some new scents for soap and i'm hoping to get a bath bomb safety assessment as soon as I can. My soap is getting a lot of requests and interest so here's hoping. I'm having a lot of fun doing this....more than I ever had with Jewellery making and selling. I'm also gradually listing these on Folksy and trying to design a menu/price list :)

Okays well i need to go properly rest now and I think these should involve some disney movies.....

What a weekend....

Had a great weekend .....attended my first clothes swap in Hull. Great way to get rid of clothes you don't want and find some new things. There was also a vintage market there. If you've never been to a clothes swap give it a go ....  http://www.facebook.com/pages/Clothes-Swap/163500817042425

Sunday was spent wandering along the Humber with my gorgeous boyfriend. We have still a long way to go in terms of training for the half marathon in September. I'm still a long way of being fit after last year's injury to my foot so it's gonna take a lot of practice. A quick stop at Hull's fruit market on the way.....they have them every sunday and although small, have a nice variety of quirky things including lots of nice eaty things :). http://www.fruitspace.co.uk/markets/

So today is for catching up on sleep.....the anti-biotics they have me on, are making me feel very poorly. But I have four new soap moulds to try out so I'm going to try and get some of those done and plenty of resin brooches to list on folksy finally.

Hoping as well that I start to hear back from some of the craft fairs that i've applied for, I really want to get out there and get some of these lovely products shifted !!

Positivity .....the strangest element of life.

It seems to me, no matter how hard we try, we are constantly fighting to keep our heads above the water. For what I don't understand. I know for me to survive in the best possible state, I need to surround myself in positivity. But this just seems so hard to maintain. I'm so tired, and the reserve of get up and go that i've had from birth which has kept fighting keeps dwindling down and down, to the point where now, i'm just meh. Every time I try to do something for the better, someone somewhere pisses on my BBQ. Ungrateful, selfish, whatever people think of me, they are wrong about me and they will never understand how hard I fight, how hard I work, and how tired my body is,  inside and out. This stupid illness that affects my brain, the fact that it makes me appear as thick as mud, the pain that i go through every day. The thing I find hardest to swallow, when people say you can't be that bad because you work. They don't see what I sacrifice and have sacrificed in order to work. And all I want every now and then, is to be able to talk to someone about it, positively, without being patronized, without being told what's best for me. I surrender, because it's never gonna happen. But what I will say, is go Piss on your own frigging BBQ, because mine is staying lit for the foreseeable future.

A Creative Day.....

Today I'm excited because the glue that I need to finish off my resin brooches has arrived and I have a new resin colour to play around with (Pink), and two new molds. A bracelet mold and a mixed charm mold. I hope to create some pop arty type pendants using some old comic books so now i can start playing around with those ideas. I'm really excited about playing around with resin as a media as I think it will sell better and is a better quality product. I'm hoping that these will sell really well as I need to put away some money for the fees for my masters course in September and to start some fast track a levels.  I messed up my A-levels whilst at school, so I want a chance to do the A-Levels I should have done !! Hopefully I'll have some pictures to put up later.

Off the ground.....

So I've been playing at this making and selling lark for about 10 years....just making enough to keep me in new craft supplies. But my health seems to be getting worse as each year goes on, and I'd like to improve the quality of my free time by reducing my time at work, for this to happen I need to make this crafting business work a little bit better and work more seriously towards it. I'm also really fed up a lot of the time and I'm used to being much more of a positive and bouncy person, so I'm hoping being more pro-active about things in life will help me overcome the difficulties I'm finding in life.

I have Elhers-Danlos Syndrome and CFS/ME. I don't like to moan about either and I hate the fact that I have to spend so much of my life balancing the two stupid conditions/diseases whatever you like to call them ! But I've had to deal with the fact that my joints are becoming more problematic as I get older and coming to terms with this is getting harder. I'm also finding it hard to deal with my relapses that I keep having because of my CFS/ME and this is making me so angry and frustrated. I feel that I'm a burden, I hate having to rely on friends and family and I feel like a fraud a lot of the time because they can't see my exhaustion or the daily pain, even though inside I know I'm at my limits, I have no way of showing this to people. Crafting keeps me occupied when I'm at my poorliness and gives me a break from it. It's relaxing and therapeutic.

So in order to try and get this off the ground a little more, I've set up a blog and twitter accounts, applied for a shed load of craft fairs, set up an Alternative Artists network on facebook and updated my folksy page......

And now i think i might sleep..........or drown  myself in lucozade......:)