New Year, New Me

 I cannot believe that I forgot that I have a BLOG!!! SO much has changed in the YEARS since my last entry!

• I've gotten divorced
• I've left bedside nursing and now teach (since 2013)
• I've costumed a couple high school theatre productions (Mary Poppins was my FAVORITE!).
• I bought my first house ON MY OWN!
• My best friend from HS passed away
• Had a heart attack
• I'm almost finished with my Associate's of Arts degree, with an emphasis on costume (my mom keeps telling me I should go for a higher degree - but how many degrees does a person need?!)

There are multitudes of other things that I could continue on about, but I'm sure that you're not here for that. As the end of 2021 looms around the corner, I am finding myself asking: "Why aren't you happier than you were when you last made an entry to this blog?" The only answer I have been able to come up with is that I've been doing everything for everyone else and have neglected the person that really matters the most: Me. I don't see myself as a selfish person; I was brought up to be thankful for the things that you have (food in your belly, roof over your head, clothes on your back, etc.). I grew up very poor, like Back to School shopping at the Salvation Army poor along with the idea that paying more than $20 for a pair of shoes was crazy!At the same time, I grew up wanting what others had. I wanted to be the popular kid whose parents bought them their first car, paid for their car insurance, bought them designer clothes (well, maybe just not clothes previously worn by strangers who didn't want them anymore). With all this being said, I'm going to be making a relatively difficult change in my life; I'm going to start doing the things that make me happy. I love sewing, but I've put it on the back burner (for the most part) because I have felt the need to serve others. "I'll do it another day, I guess." was a statement that I kept telling myself. I haven't worn a self-made halloween costume for quite sometime. Hell, I haven't even dressed for Halloween for several years now. All that is going to change. I've been dreaming/designing a Halloween costume for the last three years. I'm going to do it for Halloween 2022! Pandemic be damned. Nay-sayers: Kiss my backside! For Halloween 2022, I will be serving my rendition of the Queen of Hearts! Not the Helena Bonham-Carter/Johnny Depp/Tim Burton interpretation either. I will be doing the 1951 Walt Disney Animated Feature "Alice in Wonderland" version:

There will be some modifications that I will bring to the design, but this is the overall aesthetic that I will be going for. I may mix in a bit of "Off with their heads!" a la Kathy Griffin, but there will only be a few people that would get the underlying reference of whose head I would be carrying around. For the record, it will not be that of my ex-husband! I'll just say this: It would be the head of a prior boss who tried unsuccessfully to tarnish all the work I had done for the school. Alas, I will forgo further explanation at this time. Now that I will have a few days off, I will begin with some photography sessions of the two costume pieces that I have been able to produce over the last three and a half years for this project! Stay tuned for those to be posted...and that will be within the next few DAYS (not YEARS!). Until then... C!