My Rambling Autobiography

 Posted by Alysha DeShaé on Wednesday, November 09, 2011 at 07:00 pm  Me, Scribbles, Thoughts
Nov 092011
 
Rambling Thoughts

Inspired by the few I’ve discovered through various means, I’ve chosen to do my own rambling autobiography.  Be scared…  Also, if it’s in block quotes, it isn’t part of this writing exercise.

I was born April 12, 1984.  I’ve never stayed too long away from my family.  I moved to Texas when I was in middle school and again for a year after college, but I always came back.  I married my high school love New Year’s Day of 2011.  I love taking pictures.  My cats are my children.  My niece is second favorite person.  The first favorite is my husband, naturally.  I can’t cook without a recipe.  I remember characters in books better than people I’ve known my entire life.  Jaime let me have one of the rooms in the house as a library in exchange for me letting him have the other as a playroom/office.  I sleep best on the floor in my library surrounded by my books.

I love visiting the library, but since I’ve gotten my nook I haven’t gone nearly as often as I would like.  I enjoy music, but I don’t care one bit about the people who sing/play it.  I’m an Atheist, but religions intrigue me.  I enjoy reading some Christian fiction because I find it funny.  I recently discovered that there is a genre of Christian romance books – I haven’t read any yet, but I will.  Romance books turn me off.  Historical romance books make me giggle.  I love reading about history.  I keep a list of soon-to-be-released books on my expo board with their release dates so I don’t forget them.  Goodreads is quickly becoming my most visited site.  I’m a hardcore GoogleGirl, but I can’t tell you the name of their CEO; I just use and love their products.

I follow Randall Milholland on Twitter because I love his comic and he constantly makes me laugh.  I sometimes abuse Twitter, but I enjoy updating when I have the ability.  I work at Cabela’s and actually enjoy my job and the people with whom I work.  I hate needing to work.  I’m fluffy because I prefer reading to moving.  Without the internet, I would be even more boring than I am.  I’m okay with being boring.  Pop music is pleasing to me even if I’m “too old” for it.  I still listen to boybands and all the music I listened to when I was younger.  My music library is completely formatted at 128kbps in the AAC format and I’m a little disappointed in myself for doing that.  My iPod Classic and iTunes are the only Apple products I like.

If I could find an open source alternative to iTunes that would manage my music files as well as iTune does then I would switch in a heartbeat.  I use iGain to normalize my music files.  I use Calibre to organize, manage, and convert (if necessary) my ebooks and I also use it to push the ebooks to my nook.  My nook is the one item that I always have with me.  I read more than ever now that I have an ereader.  I still insist on DTEs of books I enjoyed, but ebooks are perfectly acceptable for all books, especially the books I didn’t like so much that I’ll reread them regularly.  My family has always picked on me for reading so much, but not in a mean way.  They just know that all presents given or received will be book related.

I get my love of reading most obviously from my grandmother – we’re constantly sharing books.  My mom used to read to me when I was younger.  My parents always made sure I had books available to me.  My dad got rid of all my Goosebumps, Babysitters’ Club, Great Illustrated Classics, Box Car Children, and a few other sets one year at a garage sale.  I didn’t find out until all that was left were a few of my V. C. Andrews’ books.  I broke down in tears.  I have a large collection of Golden Books and a moderate collection of other children’s books and movies for when I have kids.  I use Book Collector and Movie Collector (from Collectorz) to manage and catalog my DVD and DTE book collections.  My library is finally organized the way I like it.  At this point in time, I have only come across one series of books that I feel should be burned, but I can’t bring myself to do it.

Rambling Thoughts

Rambling Thoughts

If I’m at my computer, I’m either listening to music or watching something on netflix.  If I’m writing a book review, I like to listen to classical music or movie scores.  When I play Pottermore, I listen to the Harry Potter soundtracks.  I do not own any of the Harry Potter movies.  I didn’t buy any of the Harry Potter books until they were available in the trunk box set.  Ditto for Percy Jackson.  The Twilight books were all out by the time my grandmother told me I needed to read them, so I bought a boxed set when I got them.  Jaime started buying me the collector’s edition Twilight books, and now that the last one is out, I’m going to get rid of the box set.  I have a small rock that I keep on my bookshelf near the Twilight books to help illustrate my defense against sparkly vampires.

Jaime thinks I like Twilight a lot more than I actually do, and that’s okay with me.  I only have one Willow Tree figurine, Promise, and it was bought on our honeymoon.  Jaime is the only guy who has ever bought me real jewelry, and he started in high school with a beautiful crucifix for my 16th birthday.  I still have and occasionally wear the crucifix in spite of my lack of belief.  I can’t remember ever believing in a god; my theory is that my parents did a horrible job of explaining the difference between God and Santa.  I still have the deep belief that the Easter Bunny is real even though I know the trick my parents used to get me to believe when I was younger.  My birthday has fallen on Easter Sunday twice so far in 1998 and 2009; it will happen again in 2020.  Right now, all I can think about are bookends – I need 30 of them.

I’ve recently discovered a love for graphic novels.  I have two sets of the “Chronicles of Narnia,” neither are movie-cover tie-ins, both are numbered differently from the publisher, and I’ve read each set several times.  I have more pictures of my cats and niece than almost anyone or anything else.  I still have stuffed animals from when I was a baby.  I have two stuffed dragons (one blue, one red) hanging from the ceiling in my library that Jaime bought me last year.  I can’t imagine how I would get off-track during a “rambling autobiography,” but I still feel as though I’ve done this wrong because it’s longer than any of the others I’ve seen.

I’m thinking that I should have gone to Jaime’s room to type this.  My life does, to some extent, revolve around books and reading, but typing my thoughts while surrounded by my books certainly emphasized that.  Well, I can’t see how it could remain the way it’s supposed to if I go back and edit it, so I’m leaving it as is.

Write your own rambling autobiography and leave me a link to read it!  For that matter, type it in the comments!  I’m really curious to see how others will do this little activity.  Just start typing about yourself and see where your thoughts take you.  :-)

By the way, I have a playlist of songs that have never been played after being added to my library that I leave playing so that the songs scrobble to Lastfm.  I also have a playlist of songs that have been played fewer than three times that I often play while working at my computer to insure that I listen to every song at least twice.  I use my mom’s and brother’s computers to back-up both my ebook library and my music library.  My mom recently gave me a simple recipe for baking chicken and I’m planning to use it for the second time tonight.  Jaime and I often eat the same meal a few days in a row when I cook so I can get more practice.  Hormel makes microwavable roasts that are fantastic!

I use Microsoft Paint on a regular basis even though I have PhotoShop and PaintShop.  I really like eating chicken.  The only thing better than chicken is turkey.  My favorite meal, though, is meatloaf, mashed potatoes and gravy, carrots and peas.  I really love sweet iced tea.  I have a cup full at my hand and another pitcher steeping right now.  The paragraph spacing in this post was done mostly to help make it easier to read, not to separate ideas.  Writing is something I would love to do, but my plot ideas tend to fizzle out because I either over-simplify or over-complicate them.  I considered participating in NaNoWriMo this year, but forgot about it until after the start of the month and decided against starting late.

I will definitely participate next year.  I participate in the Alzheimer’s Walk to Remember in Baton Rouge every year along with my family in memory of Honey, my grandfather.  Certain people in my family drive me bananas!  Other people in my family are counted among my best friends even though I don’t actually talk to them as often as I would like.  I’m horrible when it comes to keeping in touch with someone.  I had an internet penpal once, but forgot to check my email for a few weeks and was too embarrassed to email them back after ignoring them for so long.  I interact more with strangers online than with people I know in real life.  I prefer pixels to people.  I prefer penguins to dogs.  I’m a cat person.

I was going to continue typing until I realized the time.  I need to throw some chicken in the oven, clean the litter box, and sweep up a bit before Jaime gets home.  Enjoy this incredibly long rambling autobiography brought to you by yours truly.  ^_^

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“There Was a Child Went Forth”

 Posted by Alysha DeShaé on Monday, September 13, 2010 at 02:51 pm  Me, Scribbles
Sep 132010
 

When I was in middle school, I was in TAG Reading and English classes.  TAG was what the “talented and gifted” program was called.  I had the same teacher for three years and I was lucky because Mrs. Braud was awesome.  :-)

At the end of our eighth grade year, she made us little photo albums with pictures from all three years.  At the beginning of mine (and I’m assuming everyone else’s) was a poem that we had to write once.  It was based off of Walt Whitman’s poem “There Was a Child Went Forth.”  We used a slight variation of the first verse to start our poem, then we added our own verses, and concluded our poem with Whitman’s last line.

This is my version:

There was a child went forth every day, and every object she look’d upon, that object she became.
And that object became part of her for the day or a certain part of the day, or for many years or stretching cycles of years.

The book and poems that were read to her,
And the flowers of springs mixed with suns of summers,
And many winds of fall and winter all became a part of that child.

The wasps and bees and lizards and snakes,
And the cookie-snowmen all became a part of that child.
The nice, hot meals enjoyed with family,
The snacks and junk and “child play” and then at last, adult treatment.
These became a part of that child who went forth every day, and who now goes, and will always go forth every day.

I’m fairly positive, based on the year that she included with my poem, that we wrote these towards the end of our eighth grade year specifically for these photo albums.  If that’s the case, then it was written in 1998, probably around spring, right before then end of the 1997-’98 school year.

For those who would prefer to read the original poem instead of my poor knock-off, it is in the public domain and available from Project Gutenberg.  So, here it is:

There was a child went forth every day,
And the first object he look’d upon, that object he became,
And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day,
Or for many years or stretching cycles of years.

The early lilacs became part of this child,
And grass and white and red morning-glories, and white and red clover, and the song of the phoebe-bird,
And the Third-month lambs and the sow’s pink-faint litter, and the mare’s foal and the cow’s calf,
And the noisy brood of the barnyard or by the mire of the pond-side,
And the fish suspending themselves so curiously below there, and the beautiful curious liquid,
And the water-plants with their graceful flat heads, all became part of him.

The field-sprouts of Fourth-month and Fifth-month became part of him,
Winter-grain sprouts and those of the light-yellow corn, and the esculent roots of the garden,
And the apple-trees cover’d with blossoms and the fruit afterward, and wood-berries, and the commonest weeds by the road,
And the old drunkard staggering home from the outhouse of the tavern whence he had lately risen,
And the schoolmistress that pass’d on her way to the school,
And the friendly boys that pass’d, and the quarrelsome boys,
And the tidy and fresh-cheek’d girls, and the barefoot negro boy and girl,
And all the changes of city and country wherever he went.

His own parents, he that had father’d him and she that had conceiv’d him in her womb and birth’d him,
They gave this child more of themselves than that,
They gave him afterward every day, they became part of him.

The mother at home quietly placing the dishes on the supper-table,
The mother with mild words, clean her cap and gown, a wholesome odor falling off her person and clothes as she walks by,
The father, strong, self-sufficient, manly, mean, anger’d, unjust,
The blow, the quick loud word, the tight bargain, the crafty lure,
The family usages, the language, the company, the furniture, the yearning and swelling heart,
Affection that will not be gainsay’d, the sense of what is real, the thought if after all it should prove unreal,
The doubts of day-time and the doubts of night-time, the curious whether and how,
Whether that which appears so is so, or is it all flashes and specks?
Men and women crowding fast in the streets, if they are not flashes and specks what are they?
The streets themselves and the facades of houses, and goods in the windows,
Vehicles, teams, the heavy-plank’d wharves, the huge crossing at the ferries,
The village on the highland seen from afar at sunset, the river between,
Shadows, aureola and mist, the light falling on roofs and gables of white or brown two miles off,
The schooner near by sleepily dropping down the tide, the little boat slack-tow’d astern,
The hurrying tumbling waves, quick-broken crests, slapping,
The strata of color’d clouds, the long bar of maroon-tint away solitary by itself, the spread of purity it lies motionless in,
The horizon’s edge, the flying sea-crow, the fragrance of salt marsh and shore mud,
These became part of that child who went forth every day, and who now goes, and will always go forth every day.

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The Protector and the Slug

 Posted by Alysha DeShaé on Friday, August 27, 2010 at 03:31 pm  Fairy Tale, Scribbles
Aug 272010
 

Before the Protector came to his Princess, he was unwillingly linked to the Slug.

His life was not his own and he had no say over how he spent most of his time.  The Slug enjoyed making his life miserable and did so every chance she got.

At one point, the Slug had believed herself to be in love with the Protector.  She managed to cast a spell to overcome his love for his Princess and bound him to her in every way she could.

Over time, the spell weakened.  The Slug forgot to strengthen the spell and the Protector began to regain control over his heart.  As he regained control, he tried in vain to sever all ties with the Slug.  That was easier said than done for, in spite of her recent lack of care for the spell, her original work had laid a very strong foundation that was proving difficult to break.

The Protector began expressing his own thoughts and opinions about the Slug’s actions both to her and to others.  He made it well known that what he desired most was to be free of her.

The Slug was the first to know that he wished for their bonds to be dissolved.  However, being unused to losing something that she claimed as her own, she made his attempts to free himself as difficult as she could and refused to acknowledge his requests of cooperation.

Finally, the Slug tried imprisoning him.  The Protector went into a rage and demolished the dungeon and, in doing so, broke what was left of the enchantments the Slug had cast.

The Protector left the Slug’s lands that night, never to return.  His first thought was of his Princess and returning to her side to keep her safe, as was his duty.

His Princess, confused at his sudden arrival and his unkempt appearance, for he had traveled without stop to her presence, welcomed him with open arms.  She proclaimed to her kingdom that his word was equal to hers and the two of them ushered in the Era of Love.

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I know a person, do you?

 Posted by Alysha DeShaé on Monday, June 07, 2010 at 08:03 pm  Scribbles, Thoughts
Jun 072010
 

I know a person who never lies and seldom tells the truth.

I know a person who never needs help and constantly has favors for you to do.

I know a person who never has time and is always bored.

I know a person who is never trapped and is never able to go anywhere.

I know a person who is never pessimistic and never has anything positive to say.

I know a person who lives in the past and cannot remember the events.

I know a person who never makes a mistake and cannot do the right thing.

I know a person who never puts self first and always puts others behind them.

I know a person who embodies all these statements and sometimes it depresses me.

I know this person, do you?

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The Harridan and the Carcass

 Posted by Alysha DeShaé on Tuesday, July 14, 2009 at 12:16 pm  Fairy Tale, Scribbles
Jul 142009
 

The tale of the Princess and the Protector is crossed by the tales of many others.  Some less fortunate, some cruel, and some content to merely float through life without meaning.

The Harridan and the Carcass are two beings who care for none but themselves.  They exist only to hurt and destroy.  Their greatest joy is bringing misery into the lives of everyone with whom they come in contact.

Astonishingly, the Harridan once led a good life.  She and the Princess and were raised as sisters by the King and Queen.  However, while the Princess learned to always treat others as she would be treated, the Harridan somehow learned that the world should bow down and worship her regardless of whether she had done anything to deserve it!

The Carcass was born into poverty and was deformed from the moment of his birth.  The villagers tried to kill him both in an act of mercy and to prevent him from being a drain on the town’s resources.  His mother, however, refused to allow this kindness.  So the Carcass lived, and as he grew older, it became apparent that his deformities were not merely physical.  His mind was also damaged.

He grew into a cruel being.  The villagers learned to keep their family pets within sight if the Carcass was around.  Several times, the body of a beloved cat or dog would be found impaled on someone’s fence.

The Harridan met the Carcass while roaming the countryside with her servants and searching for more victims.  Most everyone in the kingdom knew of the Harridan and stayed as far away from her as they could.  The Carcass, due to his mental deficiencies, was not aware that he should fear her.

At the time when the two met, the Harridan was throwing a temper tantrum.  One of her servants had allowed her newest victims to escape.  It stands to reason that the twisted mind of the Harridan would demand that her servant take the place of the escaped prisoners.  Therefore, when the Carcass arrived, his first view of the camp was a very bloody torture scene.

The Carcass was walking through the forest and came across the Harridan’s camp.  Mentally unable to process the danger that he had just wandered in to, he went right up to the Harridan and asked if he could help.

The Harridan, for the first time in her life, was speechless.  She had never known anyone who didn’t immediately know who she was and cower in fear.

Her servants weren’t sure what to do.  The Harridan wasn’t giving any orders and they would not and could not bring themselves to act independently within the Harridan’s presence without a direct order.

After a few minutes of silence, the Carcass turned around, picked up a stick, and began poking the tortured servant in the eye.

No one could say exactly what happened after that first meeting, but the Carcass joined the Harridan’s entourage as a servant.  Due to his twisted mind, he soon became a favorite.

While they were never married (no priest would meet with the Harridan), they lived as man and wife.  Their offspring were raised to be cruel and evil.

Over the years, the offspring of the Harridan and the Carcass became known to the peasants as the Scourge.

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