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About Me


GENEALOGY RESEARCH
I am an amateur Genealogist, planning to become certified in 2-3 years. If you would like some help, I'm happy to give it a try to give myself more experience. Send me a message through my contact form at the bottom of this site.

ARTS AND CRAFTS
It's what I do. Embroidery, basic crochet, painting with acrylics and watercolor, mixed media pieces, and random crafts.

ANIMALS
I'm animal crazy. I'll tell you more about my cats, dog, bunny, ferret, and mouse than you probably wish I will. Also, I dream of having an alpaca, mini-goat, sheep, and horse farm.

MENTAL HEALTH
I've had depression for 20 years, and recently discovered that I have bipolar II. I'll write about what that's been like, and what comes up day to day.

Popular posts from this blog

New med, New New Med, Old New Med

Alternative title for this post: I might just be a lady with a lisp from now on. I've been lucky to see the the corona-break in a pretty positive light (aside from the light that illuminates how empty the bank account is without paychecks).  It has been a time of positive change for my depression and bipolar II symptoms. Right about when the coronavirus hit and "shelter in place" went into effect I started taking the medication Abilify (generic name: aripiprazole).  My doctor suggested it as a supplemental medication to take with my antidepressant to try to boost its effectiveness.  I've tried this type of thing with Welbutrin before, and it didn't do anything (not good, not bad, just no change at all), so I wasn't expecting much.  I've been dealing with severe depression for over 15 years, and you kind of lose hope when it comes to "let's see what happens!" Holy shit.  This medication has been GOLD for me. Within two days of startin...
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Poetry by Mary Oliver

 I am reading poetry by Mary Oliver at present, at the suggestion by a very good friend. I have downloaded 2 books from my library account by Mary Oliver: "Blue Horses," and "Upstream."     It has been many years since I read poetry; like, REALLY read it to understand it, and ponder the meaning and discuss it with anyone in any literary capacity. It was back in college, really, but that was also a time when I realized that majoring in Literature was making me no longer enjoy literature (or other students in the major, if I'm honest). With that said, I was thinking about how I'd know if I was getting out of the poetry what the poet meant to convey. I don't think I can actually know that unless I ask the poet, and that won't happen, so I decided that all I can do is try it and see and be happy with what meaning I personally get from the poems. I've always loved quotes from books and bits of passages. I don't mean the kind of quotes that are fam...
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The Search For My Uncommon Last Name, Part I

If you grew up with an uncommon, oddly spelled or hard to pronounce last name, you're in good company.  With a name like "Tscherne" you can probably imagine all the ways people have attempted to pronounce it and all the incorrect spellings people came up with. My siblings and I would typically have to have pity on the poor person trying to figure out how to make sounds consistent with a last name with 6 consonants and 2 vowels, one of those vowels only finally coming into the mix after 4 consonants.  I can't tell you how many times we all went through hearing things like "Next up is (first name) T...Tch...Tich....Ch....Sh...Tuh...Tech..." and us finally just standing up so the person could catch a break from having to settle on some collection of sounds that never resembled how we actually pronounced it (which is "Tish-ern"). I was always curious about our name and where our ancestors came from. The only people I'd ever heard of with our na...
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