It’s published!

It’s published!

UPDATE: My health since the stroke, the excommunication, the witch accusations, and Etiole . . .

Oh my – this has become quite a heavy trafficked lens. There was on day it had more than 3,000 visits. It is getting mountains of comments still, but, for the time being, the comments are still on hiatus. I just do not have the time to read all of them, and several are, well, not nice, and are frankly too upsetting for me to scroll through right now.

Sorry there has been no updates for a while. The excommunication thing is still ongoing, but from what I am seeing and hearing, while a few bishops and priests are adamant on wanting me excommunicated, they have had no luck convincing the higher authorities of The Church that they actually have a good solid case with reasonable grounds for excommunication. It’s like I said before – there is nothing in The Church’s handbooks that back up the accusations of these few local men, and it seems that the Salt Lake leadership is rather inclined to view these accusations to be just as silly and ludicrous as I myself feel they are.

However, the local bishop has put out a recommendation of disfellowship with in the local church congregation, in other words, members who formally had contact with me and called themselves my friends, as now “giving me the shunning I so rightly deserve”. Go figure. It’s not like I haven’t been shunned before. The first time I was shunned was when I was just 12 years old. Just goes to show how fickle these so-called “friends” really are. If that’s what they call friendship, well than I’m glad I never considered them to be my friends in the first place!

In any case, endless weeks of interviews and interrogation (which involved church leaders accusing me in “church court”, while I myself was not allowed to say a word in my own defense) has taken a toll on my health. I was scheduled for yet another of these closed door meetings with the Bishop and other church leaders on October 19th, 2009. However, I did not attend my scheduled interrogation because an hour prior to the meeting I had a stroke, which unfortunately has had a devastating effect on my health over all. I temporarily lost the ability to walk unaided or to lift anything. I also suffered from selective amnesia, which now results in my inability to remember anything that just happened to me. In other words I wake up today with no memory of yesterday. What little eyesight I had to begin with was also affected by the stroke. Formerly I could see about 8 inches from my face, now I can barely see 4 inches from my face, changing me from “nearly blind” to “legally blind”. It also had an effect on my ability to type, thus the reason you see a decrease in my blog posts, and my Squidoo lens building, and also why I retired from being a Squid Angel here on Squidoo. The stroke also weakened my over all immune system, resulting in my coming down with a server case of N1H1 the first week of November, and spent the most of November and December in a nearly bed ridden state.

I can’t remember the proper medical term for the type of stroke I had, I think it began with an “N”, but I am told that in simple terms it means “a stress induced mini-stroke brought on by a panic attack leading to a nervous breakdown leading to a stroke” and that this type of a stroke is a “warning sign” before a “major stroke” and that the only way to prevent the onset of a life threatening major stroke, is to remove all stress from ones life. I have to ask, how it is I am supposed to do that, when I have not left my house in nearly 20 years, and my stress is caused by the vandals that refuse to stop trespassing on my land to destroy my property, kill me pets, and than burned down my house forcing me to live under a tarp, all in the name of “driving out my demon”, “getting rid of the witch”, and doing it “because God told them to”. How do I get rid of this stress when it comes daily to my secluded near impossible to locate home? I only ever left my house to go to church on Sundays, and it’s been 9 years since I’ve done that, due to the fact that members took to shooting me with paint ball guns every time I tried to go into the church! How do I end the stress when I have to deal with these types of idiots who have nothing better to do than barge in uninvited into my life and harass me? It’s bad enough I have no one to help me, but why do people have to go out of their way to hurt me? I fail to see the logic behind their actions.

I am, happy to report that, as of January 2010, I have regained my ability to walk, and my ability to lift things, so I’m back to carrying 50lb bags of grain and cat-food across the 500 foot path from the street to the barn several times a week. 19 cats and 100 chickens, take a lot of feed each week, and normally I carry 2 bags at a time on my shoulders, (100lbs) but the stroke had left me unable to lift more than 4 or 5 lbs at a time. Seeing how I had no friends or family to help me while I was in my invalid state, I had no choice but to carry the cat-food and grain across the yard to the barn, in mixing bowls, because I was unable to lift anything heavier at the time.

Funny, I asked for help from some church members, so-called friends, and family members, and the answer I got back was: “You’ve got Etiole to help you. Have him carry the grain.” Their sarcasm is duly noted, and I would like to take this time to answer them. Etiole as I have said before is a frail little creature. He is barely bigger than a small child. He stands about 5′ 1″ to 5′ 3″, is desperately underweight, I seriously doubt if he weighs much more than 50lbs, and besides all that he is a notoriously fastidious fop. Besides his lack of body build, there is also his health to consider – as I said before, his health is not good, he is very weak, and rarely moves around much any more. Another thing to consider is his age. He is elderly, very elderly. He is the equivalent of a Human man in his 80s or 90s. Etiole is very, very, very, very old. He is near the end of his natural lifespan. Plus he has “germ issues”, very OCD germ issues, that keep him far away from from contact with farm manure. And did I mention he’s a fop? A fop = a man who could be best described as acting and dressing like an fancy, high society, elite, snob female. I did say he’s a drag queen. He won’t get his hands dirty. He won’t lift a thing. He’s the type who’d have a major overblown panic attack over a broken nail or a wrinkle in his dress. So, even if he could lift anything (which he can’t), he wouldn’t. No, Etiole is the farthest thing in the world from helpful when farm work is concerned.

The people who made the suggestion are already aware of these things, so their suggestion was nothing more than seething sarcasm, which is as about as helpful to me as a pile of ant dung. And so, I continue the farm work, alone, but since the stroke, it has become a chore in itself just for me to walk the huge long path from the road, down the cliff, across the collapsed bridge over the brook, through the garden, to the woods, to the barn.

During the course of my severely weakened sick state, I was called in to the Bishop’s office on several more occasions, however, I being too sick to get out of bed, and only leaving my sickbed long enough to feed the cats and hens each day than crawl back into bed, I thus did not go to any farther meetings with the Church leadership. They won’t stop. I don’t know how to get them to stop. I don’t bother them, I don’t talk to them, I don’t see them, I don’t even leave my yard any more in order to avoid them, and yet, they are relentless. If any one knows of any way to get these creeps out of my life once and for all – please let me know. Though, the fact that 16 of these people died in 2009, all from “freak accidents” -such as being hit by falling limbs or lightening, does indicate that if they don’t stop soon, Etiole is just going to annihilate the whole lot of them. In any case, with 16 of the reoccurring vandals now dead in the past 7 months, I have had a greatly reduced amount of vandalism and stress, seeing how dead vandals can no longer invade my land and vandalize it.

Those people who told me to ask Etiole to help me, I guess, when people say to ask Etiole for help, they don’t realize what that implies. He may not be able to lift a bag of grain, but he is good at changing local weather patterns and sending hail and lightening where-ever he wants it to go. So, in a way, I guess you could say that he helps out around the farm in his own way.

Waiting for Emmett to come.

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http://www.scriptfrenzy.org/user/132659

ScriptWriting Software or No . . .

I just got the following chat message on FaceBook:

hey
can u tell me which software u use for scripting?

Just got your message – sorry, my computer was on, but I was in the other room, so I wasn’t actually online. Not sure if you meant scripting like play/screen writing or scripting like html/java (I do both) so I’ll answer for both.

For a play I use several different ones, back and forth, all of which are listed on this page: http://www.scriptfrenzy.org/eng/software Of those I find Scibbed easiest to use. However, I rarely use any of the traditional Scriptwriting softwares at all. Usually I type everything up using yWriter5 (can download free from here: http://support.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=design ) Than After I type it up there I copy and paste it into MSWorkd Word Proseccor and just manually format it using basic formatting such as this one: http://www.scriptfrenzy.org/eng/howtoformatastageplay

For html/java, I don’t use software, I learned it from chatting with web scripters on this forum: http://support.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=design

Hope that helps. Good luck!

Waiting for Emmett to come.

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RE: MonkeyBrain: Are experiences of aliens a form of psychic experience?

Are experiences of aliens a form of psychic experience? I just chimed in here: http://www.squidoo.com/aliens-psychic#module64301572

Wow – I wish I could vote on both sides. I think the answer is: “Yes, some form of clairvoyance is involved.”

But than, I also say: “No. They have a physical body anybody might see. They’re just shy.”

Explanation: I believe that most (if not all) of these beings have actual physical bodies, but I also believe that they are using a form of clairvoyance to hide themselves.

I do believe that many, maybe even most “alien encounters” are a form of psychic experience with spirit beings. I actually believe that both “alien abductions/encounters” and “messages from angels/god’s messengers” are in fact the same thing, translated in two different ways, depending on how the experiencer interprets what happened to them.

I’m not entirely sure that I’ve “meet an alien” though some folks say that is the case. I can say I’ve meet “a creature of debatable origins”. He does have a physical flesh and blood body, but he has this, I don’t know, psychic ability, I guess you could call it, that effects what people see when they see him, and thus most people are unable to see him. In other words to most people he is “invisible”, though invisible is not exactly the correct word, because it’s more a change in the person’s visual perception, rather than his having a change in viability.

I have discovered that a few people can see him, usually small children, rarely ever adults, but that every one who does see him, sees him differently – he has been described with very different appearances, depending on who is seeing him, and when. He has been described as appearing as a “White Monkey”, “a merman”, “a White Salamander”, “a Gray” (a small pale skinned alien with large black eyes), “a Venusian/Nordic”, “a demon from hell”, “an evil spirit”, and “a wooly haired angel”.

From my own experience, I’ve come to believe that a person’s own “spiritual energy” or “psychic ability” seems to be the determining factor in wither they can see him o not as well as how they see him.

Long story short, while some folks say he is an alien from outer space and others say he is a spirit being (either demon or angel depending on who you are talking too), but as for myself personally, I don’t think he is either. I think he is a cryptid (a rare and elusive creature of natural origin – think sasquatch, yeti, loch ness monster). And I also believe that most, if not all, alien, angel, faerie, and ghost sightings are in fact contact with one of these elusive, but very natural beings with an ability to hide themselves from humans, by using a psychic ability to manipulate a person;s visual perception. I call these creatures “Faeries” seeing how I feel that term fits them better than any thing else.

My lens: http://www.squidoo.com/amphibious-aliens goes into a lot more detail on my thoughts about this topic, thanks for featuring it here on your lens, btw! {{{hugs}}}

Wow – what a long comment. I don’t very often have this much to say on a MonkeyBrain. =P

Waiting for Emmett to come.

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Advice For Squid Angels on Squidoo

My answer to THIS QUESTION
about what to do in regards to dinging and reporting lenses.

The fact that you have no option to bless the lens is a bug that needs to be reported so it can be fixed. For that use the submit a bug form. You could also send a message to Kim and let her know about the blessing icon not showing up. It should always be there regardless of the lens content. And, yep, it has happened before. When Squidoo introduced the new template options, they “forgot” to add the blessing icons and non of the angels could bless any of the lenses that were using the new templates. That went on for about a week, before we could bless lenses again.

Answering your question:

It’s possible they are new and still have not figured out the ropes of Squidoo yet, so if the lens is not spam or TOS and it’s a really low rank, I would simply ignore it for now – in other words: do nothing.

I was an angel who rarely dinged and even less rarely reported. My feeling on the matter is that, crappy lenses get ignored and fall to the bottom of Squidoo. I spent my time worrying about blessing as many good lenses as possible. My first 2 months as an angel I had a 100 blessings per day goal – and set out to bless 100 lenses each and every day. Uhm, I didn’t actually bless 100 lenses every day, but I tried to anyways. LOL! My theory is that by promoting the best of Squidoo, the worst of Squidoo will fall by the wayside on it’s own.

What you have to ask yourself is this:

Is this lens spam? Is this lens a TOS violation? If you answer yes to either of those than report it.

If you answered no to both and you don’t think it’s a WIP lens, than ding it.

If you suspect it is a WIP lens than do nothing for now, wait a couple of weeks, check it again and see if the lensmaster has finished it yet, and than reevaluate what to do next, choosing than to report, ding, or once again do nothing.

I just retired from Angeling last week, but here is my personal guideline that I went by:

5 stars and a Blessing = a lens that deserves more than 5 stars

5 stars = a really outstanding lens

4 stars = a pretty good lens, but not quite outstanding

3 stars = a pretty good lens, but could use a little work

Favorite = any of the above on a favorite subject of mine and/or a lens I want to go back to again

I don’t use the 2 star and 1 star ratings

Do nothing = a lens that may or may not be still under construction and has little content, but does not seem to be spam

Ding = a crappy lens that is almost spam or could be translated as spam

Ding and Report = a TOS violation and/or outright spam

When it came to dinging, basically, I reserved that for the spam. You have no idea how much spam there is on Squidoo until you become an angel! OMG! There were days when one person would create a dozen new accounts and than create 10 lenses on each account – all EXACTLY THE SAME and usually promoting TOS violations (porn, prescription drugs, casinos, etc.) Those are the lenses that require the dings and reports. Why? Because that one person with 12 accounts, spends their second day on Squidoo, giving each of their lenses 11 five star rating, and by the end of the week, all 120 of their lens find their way into the Top 100 lists of each category! UGH! You can’t even begin to imagine how often that sort of thing happens – again and again and again, day after day, week after week. UGH! It’s only thanks to Squidoo’s busy team of angels, that these TOS violations stay off the Top 100 lists. That’s the hardest part of being an angel – trying to keep up with all the spam that comes in every day.

Waiting for Emmett to come.

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Thoughts on Squidoo Forum Battles Over RocketMoms

Since the creation of the RocketMom’s Group on Squidoo, there has been an ongoing battle between members of the group and the rest of Squidoo. A childish and silly battle over the frivolous matter of who is allowed to join the group. For the most part, non members of RocketMoms are angry that the group does not allow men, dads, and childless women to join the group. Only females who are also mothers are allowed to join.

Men are outraged that they are being discriminated against (even though there IS in fact an alternate group that only let’s men join.) Single, pro-career, pro-feminist women are outraged that their choice to not give birth has barred them membership.

Oddly, no women who want to be mothers but can’t be mothers, have come forward to comment on this debate and thus I felt the need to add my own 2 cents to the debate.

Here is the long and heated debate.

And copied below is my answer posted on that debate:

The Rocket Moms debate – yeah, I can understand why some are feeling hurt. I can also understand starting groups for only “certain demographics”, so I don’t care who they say can join or not.

The mention that people are being discriminated based on sex or life style choice, however, bothers me, because I’m not excluded from the group based on either reason – I’m excluded because I am physically disabled.

I’ve been just about everything you can be on Squidoo at one time or another. Everything except a Rocket Mom that is.

Do you want to know why I’m not a Rocket Mom? Because I have ovarian cysts resulting in a life of constant pain and infertility. I don’t visit ANY of the Rocket Mom lenses, because it’s just a painful reminder to me that I’m not allowed to have the one thing I want most in life: to have a baby. And let’s face it, five miscarriages doesn’t make me a mom, it only makes me depressed to be around other moms.

In short, I’m not upset about the group itself, because of the group. You see – everything about motherhood upsets me. I can’t walk past baby books in the book store. I can’t even go to WalMart if I see a woman carrying a baby walking into the store. Every time I hear the word, “Mom” or “Baby” I just sit down on the ground and start crying. The stress of this, got so bad that on October 19th 2009, I had what I’m now told was “A Stress Induced Stroke”. (Which btw is why I had to give up being a Squid Angel – my health has been bad off the past couple of months.)

But you see, that’s not me singling out the RocketMoms group, because it’s EVERYTHING that has any thing to do with being a mother, that triggers these massive panic attacks.

However, all that said, I do not understand the animosity I see and read and hear against the RocketMom Group. It’s like a private group with a limited membership. There are thousands of groups out there, each only allowing certain demographics that exclude anyone that does not fall in with the group requirements. Does that mean that all cat owners should be storming all dog owner groups? No! That means they should let the dog owners have their group, and go seek out a group for cat owners instead. RocketMoms is no different.

I’m not a mom, I never will be, and therefor I can not join their group, and have no reason to try to either.

Think about it = if you went to a local meeting for moms, would you REALLY like to be the ONLY dad in the group? Or the only childless woman? I mean, really! What would you have to talk about? They’ll be chatting about babies and motherhood and what would you have to contribute to their conversation? So how is the RocketMoms group any different?

RocketMoms is a group for people with a shared common life experience, a life experience which I do not share and therefor have no reason to join their group, and likewise have no reason to get upset about not being able to join their group. I mean, why should I try to join their group? I’m not a mom. And even if for some unknown reason I did get invited to join it, I ask again: why should I try to join their group? I’m not a mom. I’d feel out of place in a group of moms. It would be in my personal best interest to seek out (or even create) a group that I personally had more things in common with, say comic book collectors on Squidoo, or authors on Squidoo, etc.

So, in the end, me question is this: What is all the fuss about? Why are folks getting upset over not being allowed to be a RocketMom? It’s a group for moms, so, isn’t it only right that only moms are allowed to join it?

Waiting for Emmett to come.

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RE: Alien Abduction Help, Sleep will you ever come peacefully?

Alien Abduction Help Group Email Question/Response

On Jan 5, 9:55 pm, “J.Jay” wrote:

> So since my new years even, I havent really had but one peaceful
> nights sleep and thats because i stayed at my mothers. I find i sleep
> better when loved ones are near. But since im alone a lot this fear is
> real hard to overcome. I am always happy until about 8 pm when all
> fear is cut loose. My room is a scary habitat now and i fear the
> visits are just waiting. Ive tried yelling, being strong, but once i
> lay down i loose it. This whomps. I think they are going to tear me
> to bits mentally. Now im so tired it feels like im dreaming all day.
> Like im going to astral project right in my car on the way to work.
> My body feels heavy and my spirit is still awake. Even as i type my
> arms are rested on the desk and they dont feel a part of me and i keep
> seeing stuff in the parriferals of my eye. I need help. I know there
> is only so much you can do so many miles away but please. Im trying
> real hard not to commit myself to institute..LOL.

I know the feeling. Since I was around 8 years old, I’ve had serious difficulty sleeping. Like you mentioned in your case, I can only sleep when with loved ones, but as I’m alone and rarely see anyone (due to a more recent onset of agoraphobia) sleep has become even more fleeting in recent years.

That I sleep on the floor and that I sleep in the day time, refusing to sleep on a bed or during the dark, and that I can not be alone at night or that I keep every light in the house on at night, is a thing that has troubled nearly every one who’s ever known me. I was around 8 when it started, and it grew worse as I got older. For nearly 30 years, I’ve stayed awake nights, and would go 4 or 5 days at a time refusing to sleep at all day or night, finally sleeping only when surrounded by my dogs and dozens of cats. What little sleep I do get is plagued with nightmares and while I doze off for a few hours once every few days, rest and relaxation is something I have never had at all, not once in more than 30 years.

There have only been a few times in my life that I have been able to sleep and get any rest out of it, oddly one of those periods was while I was homeless and living under a tarp for a year (in 2006 after a flood wiped out our home and left one family member in a coma). Sleeping on the back seat of the old dead car sitting in my garden is one such place. Sleeping in the hay on the floor of the barn with my dog and cats gathered around me is another place, and results in my often sleeping in the barn with the animals during the day, because I feel safe with all the animals with me (I live on a farm btw.). Sleeping on the floor or on the couch at my high priest’s house (in spite of the fact that the living room is wall, ceiling, and floor white – white rooms being an extreme major phobia for me) is the only other place, and is also the only white room I have ever been able to set foot in. The car, the barn, the tent-tarp-thing, and my high priest’s house are the only places of safety and peaceful nightmareless sleep for me.

An alien abduction researcher (who suggests alien abduction may be the cause of my nightmares) has suggested that my nightmares may hold a clue about events I may have forgotten and suggested that since I’ve said I have been plagued with nightmares for 30 years, that I write down my nightmares in hopes of finding the source that is causing them. I’ve spent 30 years ignoring my nightmares, trying to avoid talking about them, and trying to forget them. But, maybe he’s right, maybe writing them down will help, and so, I wrote them down and here they are: (I don’t know if me telling you any of this will help you out, but it may help me out some, just having some one to talk to about it, because I don’t have any one I can talk with face to face about it.)

The Green Monster:

One of my very first memories was waking up and seeing a green “creature” over my crib. I was terrified and screamed for hours. I can’t remember the incident that much, only that there was the green wrinkled up “monster” staring down at me. My parents insisted it was a nightmare, that there was nothing in the room, but I did not, and still do not believe their answer for this event. The creature I saw was very real, and I was very much awake when I saw it. It shook me up so bad that my parents had to move my room to the other side of the house (this room was on the front wall by the street, and my new room was on the back wall by the forest). I must have been about 3 years old. I started sleeping on the floor refusing to sleep in the crib again. (Thirty years later, and I still sleep on the floor, I’ve never been able to get into a bed since than.) I was about 8 or 9 years old before I would go back into that room, and I was in my mid-20’s before I was ever able to go to that side of the room where my crib had sat.

Snakes, Eels, and The Haunted Car
How Etiole changed the endings of some of the worst nightmares. . .(Etiole btw: http://www.squidoo.com/amphibious-aliens is the creature-being-alien-whatever that I’ve had contact with for many years now. I don’t know what he is, but people I’ve told about him, seem to think he’s an alien gray hybrid of some sort.)

I have always been plagued with nightmares, for as long as I could remember, I have slept during the day to avoid sleeping in the dark. My worst nightmares are always of hospitals, doctors, white rooms, public bathrooms, and toilets; my phobia of doctors is so terrible that I have only ever been to a doctor 4 times since I was 8 years old; since I was 8 years I’ve had terrible memories as well as nightmares about painful geynacological exams, at first I told my parents but they said it was my imagination, so I stopped telling them about it, but it never stopped and I still have nightmares like this on a regular weekly basis; these nightmares have resulted in my extreme phobic inability to be near doctors and a manic phobia of white rooms.

I’d also like to point out something: The nightmares, the hospital and doctor memories, those are very separate memories than my encounters with this “man” Etiole. While those memories are terrifying, my encounters with him are not, nor have I ever had reason to fear him. He is different from the memories and nightmares. Also, a large majority of my encounters with him, happen during the day while I’m awake. I don’t recall very many nighttime or sleeping encounters with him prior to my mid-20’s. He was more of a childhood companion than anything else.

I will tell you of one of these dreams, because this is one that has haunted my memories for 30 years. And has been one of the events that would have a very profound effect on how other people saw me. I have another reocurring dream about a giant snake – unrealisticly huge, like 300 or 400 feet long, big enough to cover several acres of our farmyard, it always shows up just beyound the edge of the woods where I first saw Etiole. I have not had this dream since my childhood, but back than I had it often. I would be walking towards the woods and suddenly this giant snake would apear and it would start eating everything in site – trees, animals, houses, and than it would come after me. Next thing I knew I was falling for miles and miles down an endless black pit of nothingness. I’d wake up screaming and my eyes would take a while to focus, so I’d be trying to sit up, but everything was black and I couldn’t see where I was and I’d fall out of bed (if I was in bed). (I have not used a bed at all since I was 8 years old, so I was quite young when this reoccuring dream occurred).

There were a few occasions when this dream ended differantly. In each case of the “alternate ending” I had fallen asleep on the back seat of our family car (the 1964 Dodge 330, which I still have 30 years later, and this is why I still have it) during one of our weekly road trips across New England. There was just the 3 of us – my mom and dad in front talking about the scenes and the foliage and stopping to take pictures and me in the back seat. These weekly road trips took place between 1976 – 1985 (or from the time I was 2 until I was 10). There were just so many times a small easily bored kid like me could look out the window at trees and so I often took naps on the back seat of the car. The dream would start as before, the big snake, me falling and falling, and than, instead of me waking up screaming – I’d look down into the pit and I’d see that it had turned into a salt marsh with tall grass and cool water and the water was filled with big green moray eels (NOTE: while snakes terrified me, eels did not, eels are in fact my favorite of all animals and the sight of the eels was a sign of comfort, not a sign of fear). Instead of falling forever into blackness, I would fall into the salt marsh and be surrounded by the eels, which wrapped around me to protect me from the giant snake. Than I would wake up. And this is when things get “strange” and usualy I do not tell people the rest. When I wake up, I look up at the roof of the car and see instead Etiole looking down at me, I wake up in his arms and I would spend the rest of the road trip chattering away talking with him. I did not find out until many years later that my parents never saw him and thought I was talking to “an imaginary friend”.

This was only one of the many ways in which I had encountered Etiole, but this was amoung my earliest memories of him, and would be the memories that caused me to associate him with eels, as well as how I came to view eels as symbols of love and comfort, how eels became my favorite animals, how I learned early on that I could trust Etiole, how Etiole came to become my closest friend as the years went by, and how I came to fight so hard to keep that car each time my parents tried to sell it, and how later, locals got started saying the car was “demon possessed”.

The car died and became a garden ornament and garden bench, when I was 9 years old, it still today sits in my garden, 30 years later. It all of my life, that car remains the once place I have ever felt safe.

The Children That Never Were

When I was 17, my dreams changed, no longer were they of monsters, black holes, and snakes, but now the dreams of babies and children took over, growing progressively worse as each year passed. But before the dreams, was a strange change in my health:

When I was 17 I started having problems with my period; the first thing that happened was it stopped all together and was gone for 2 almost 3 months, during this time I had symptoms of being pregnant; I became convinced that I was pregnant, and this terrified me because I had never had sex and I could not understand why I had these symptoms; than about 3 months after they started, they stopped, but that’s when my other problems started. Before this incident my period lasted 5 or 6 day out of every 28 or so. Now it became heavy and erratic, lasting 10 or 12 days and stopping only for 4 or 5 days before starting up again; the cramps became crippling and I spent much of my days bedridden; When I was 27 I was diagnosed with PMDD and told that I had cysts in my ovaries and that my problems in this area were such that I would most likely never have children. There’s actually a lot more details and symptoms, including that these “phantom pregnancies” have happened five times now and each has ended with a horribly painful and bloody miscarriages – or rather with me waking up at night in a pool of blood, no longer pregnant, but there also being no baby or remains of a baby, just lots of blood all over my floor, but I won’t go into all that here.

I’m still a virgin btw way, my religious beliefs do not allow for sex outside of marriage and I have never married (largely due to the fact that once guys find out about my “contactee info” they freak out and will have nothing to ddo with me because they think I’m [quote]* psychotic*[unquote]. I do feel very strongly that I was pregnant before, which I’ve always found terribly puzzling and can not explain it, but it’s just this unnerving sensation or feeling telling me that I was. I don’t understand why I feel it, but I do.

Since than, I have been plagued with nightmares about having children and than “losing” them. Rare dreams of pregnancies and child births, dream from which I awake in crippling pain, bleeding for days sometimes weeks afterwards, and often spend weeks on end bedridden with terrible high fevers and horrendous stomach cramps, and giant bruises on my arms, legs, and stomach. They are dreams that manifest themselves with very real medical after affects, which has caused me to suspect them of being far more than mere dreams. One does not wake up from a dream suffering medical symptoms like the ones I had. The last of these series of “pregnancy dreams” and it’s painful, bloody after symptoms took place from September of 2006 till November 2006, as usual, the dreams themselves lasting 3 months, followed by several months of pain and illness.

Early on, in my late teens and early 20’s the nightmares were of pregnancies and babies and snakes and dragons. Later on, in my mid 20’s through present time in my mid 30’s the dreams again changed the babies have become children, some now in their teen years, and now in the dreams, I’ll be running through a store or running down the street (as though I was chasing a kidnapper who had just grabbed them away from me) screaming and looking for them, but than I remember I don’t have any children and wonder why I was looking for them. The dreams always have me as the mother of 5 children, 4 who lived and one that died in infancy.

The dreams are so real and terrifying. When I wake up, I jump up and start looking for my children just like I was doing in the dream, I’ll be thinking a kidnapper came in and took them and I have to find them. Than a few seconds later it dawns on me: I am a single virgin and have never had any children, why am I looking for children that I never had to begin with?

The Children in the Barn

In one reoccuring dream I am in the barn (I grew up on a farm, the barn was torn down in 2001, but my dreams have never reflected this and are like it is still there.) and I am looking everywhere for something, and than I “remember” it’s in the attic (NOTE: The real barn was a single story building, there was no attic or hay loft or any sort of upper level in it), so I climb this set of stairs to the attic, but when I open the door, it’s not an attic on the otherside, it’s like a huge mall – one of those types with 100 stores under one roof – only it’s strange looking, everything is like it’s made out of silver and covered in giant gemstones or colored crystals, and there are all these little children running around, but they look strange or at least I think to myself the look strange but I can never rember what it is that they look like, I just remember that they are there, and they are scurring around like mice, but when I try to remember what they look like all I can see if the greyish foggy blur and I can’t make anything out at all. But I remember every time I get up there, I start thinking “Why are these children all alone? Where are their parents?” and than I’ll start walking towards them to ask them why they are alone, but at that point I always wake up. The dream is always differant – like I go to a different room each time or I get to the “attic” by means other than stairs, or sometimes they children will not be there and I’ll think they are supposed to be there so I’ll try looking for them to find out why they are not there. It’s always the same dream, but at the same time it’s never the same dream.

The Children at My Grandmother’s House

I have another reocurring dream about my grandmother’s house (on Graeme Street in Biddeford, Maine which burned down in the late 1980’s, and I started having the dream AFTER the house burt down.) Her house was a house multi level Victorian with giant rooms and lots of nooks and crannies and “secret rooms” (like tiny cloests between rooms, etc). I loved that house and as a child much of my days were spent exploring it, there was a huge screened in veranda on the front, it had a huge stone “cave” basment which I was terrified of and only was in once, and I never went upstairs because the upstairs room were rented out to tenants. The entire building was boxed in by tall boxwood bushes that had been left to run wild and towdered about 10 feet tall. I was about 10 or 12 years old when it burned down. I must have been in my late teens or early 20’s when the dreams started.

In the dreams I start out in the road out front of the house, and there is an accident or something, and a boy is being rolled away on an ambulance stretcher, but they are going past the ambulance and they are running. I start running after them. Somehow my mind is telling me that the boy is my son and they are stealing him away. The road goes down a hill, and they disapear over the horizon of the hill, but when I get to the top of the hill they are no where to be seen and I don’t know which way they went or how to find them.

The next thing I know I’m back infront of my grandmother’s house and I’m “trapped” by the huge boxwood which is now wilder and bigger than ever, I run through the bushes, as though I’m trying to escapoe from them, and I get into the veranda, but the door is locked, so I’m pounding on the bedroom window telling Grammy to hurry and open the door, than some how I’m in the front hallway and the stairs going to the basment are not there, and it’s all open like this big pit, so I run past it to the side parlor door and I hide in the cathedral ceiling living room, but when I get in there it’s a mess – papers are scattered every where, furniture is tipped over, and I start going through the house and it all like that. I can’t find Grammy anywhere, and every room in the house looks like a tornado went through it. When I reach her bedroom, I find the bed surrounded by big armoire closet/cabinets (which she did not have in real life) and all sorts of really strange looking ceramics (vases and such). I start looking at those but there is a noise in the closet (one of the ones with a secret room behind it), so I open the cloest to find out what’s in there, and than I wake up.

This dream is pretty much exactly the same every time I have it.

The Twighlight Manor – The Nightmares That Inspired The Book

I have another dream that comes regular for years and years bout a huge house with hundreds of rooms. (This house is the same house which I would eventually start referring to as “The Twighlight Manor” and is how I came to start writing the Twighlight Manor Books -a series of short stories and chapbooks I wrote in the 1970’s and 1980’s – they started out as the house that plagued my dreams each night.) This dream changes every time and is never the same, but it is always in the same place – a huge mansion with hundreds and hundreds of rooms, it’s like every time I have this dream the house has more rooms than it did before.

Sometimes the dream starts out with me in a car, I’m with some people, sometimes it’s a real estate agent, sometimes it’s just some randon strangers, in any case it is never people I know. We are driving along the coast line and we are looking for a house. We know we are getting closer, we can see it on a hill in the distance, but we never seem to be about to get closer to it no matter how far we drive. Usually, I’m either trying to buy the house or I’m showing it to someone and asking them if they know who owns it because I want to buy it. When the dream starts out like this, I never seem to be able to get to the house and trying to reach it is the whole point of the dream.

Other times the dream will start and I’m just getting to the house, but as soon as I open the front door, the whole thing tumbles to the ground like a house made out match sticks. We try going in it, and this big black/African American man shows up. He’s the owner of the house and he’s telling us how wonderful it is, and he taking us through the rooms, but it’s like he’s not real, it’s like he’s a ghost, and he keeps trying to get us to follow him, but we can’t follow him because the house has crumbled and even though he’s walking around the rooms like they are still there, there is nothing there for him to be walking on.

Most often though, the dream starts out with me inside the house. There is this really old butler, who knows me somehow and I seem to have known him for years, and he’ll be telling me something that had happened – like there will be a noise upstairs and he was afraid to check it out so asked me to do it. Usually at some point in the dream I will meet up with some children, usualy 2 girls about 14 years old and wearing very fancy Victorian dresses, usually one is all dressed in red and the other blue. Sometimes it’s a girls and a boy. Sometimes it’s 2 girls and a boy. Sometimes I hear the talking and laughing, but I never actually see them. In any case, in each dream, I always end up heading upstairs and I always end up looking for these children, but they are always running off, I’ll see them running down the hall or around the corner or into a room, but when I catch up to them they are no where to be seen. Like they are playing a game of hide and seek, but I can never find them. It seems like we are always going up, like this house has as many levels as it has rooms. But the higher up we go, the more fallen apart and rickety the whole house becomes.

In a few rare dreams, instead of going upstairs I go downstairs and in the basment I’ll meet a blacksmith who’s always building things in the huge brick oven, and the fire is so big that it make the whole basment (which is ginormouse) look like it’s set ablaze.

These “house dreams” always end with me waking up while I’m still searching for something, but I can never remember what I was searching for.

Well, that’s pretty much the basics of the dreams and why I can’t sleep.

Well, I wish you luck in your search for a peaceful seep filled night – if you find a way to have one, let me know, because I have not gotten more than a few minutes sleep 20 minutes here and 30 minutes there for more than 30 years now. I would desperately enjoy a peaceful night’s sleep for once in my life.

Waiting for Emmett to come.

http://twitter.com/EelKat
http://www.facebook.com/EelKat
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http://eelkat.wordpress.com
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New Ties from Copper Cockeral

Photography, Art, and Designs by Maine artist and photographer Wendy C Allen aka EelKat © 1978 – Present

The neck ties below represent some of the different designs and themes created EelKat for Copper Cockeral Cards & Gifts A Twighlight Manor Company.

Please click each neck tie below to view It in a larger size:

>

Celebrate our 6 year anniversary with us! (Selling art on Zazzle since 2004!)

This is the sister gallery to The Pidgie Fund, both of which are owned by The Twighlight Manor Press.

Other galleries I run include: The Rabbit Hole, EK’s Dog T’s, The Talking Car, and Old Orchard Beach, Maine Photography.

My mom and 3 brothers each have their own Zazzle Galleries, so be sure to check out their work as well @
Tiddledeewinks
FlashAllen
The Juiceman
Johnny 5 Allen

You can find out How I Became An Artist.

For those of you who have asked what I use to create my art work, here is info about My Art Equipment, and for those just starting out, I recommend using these books because they are the Best Art Instruction Books and the ones I use myself.

You can find out more about me @ Who is This EelKat Person Anyways?. And you can find out more about Copper Cockeral @Copper Cockeral Cards & Gifts

Thank you for visiting my sites.

~~EK

Like my designs? Want to sew cloths, tote bags, curtains, and pillows to match? Now you can using my line of custom fabrics created using the same designs sold here on Zazzle! http://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/eelkat Fabrics available in clothing, quilting, designer, or upholstery weights. Prices starting at just $18 a yard. Do you see one of my drawings that you like and want made into fabric? Let me know. All of my paintings will eventually become available as fabric, but it’s a long process, so if there’s one you want to see come out sooner than others, just tell me. Thanks!

More Random Dollmaking Tweets and more Xavier Obsessions

Tweets – read from bottom to top

EelKat 

did I mention I was a big fan of Xavier Roberts?less than 5 seconds ago from web

EelKat 

you know, 9 times out of 10, the main characters of my books and short stories are named, Xavier – and now you know whyhalf a minute ago from web

EelKat 

I was one of those absolutely utterly insane crazed people mobbing the store in search of Xavier Robert’s dolls back in 1982 so much fun!5 minutes ago from web

EelKat 

I never could afford his original animal dolls or Little People dolls, but when the CPKs got mass produced, I just started grabbing them up6 minutes ago from web

EelKat 

I had already been collecting Xavier’s doll patterns and articles about him several years before the CPKs were created8 minutes ago from web

EelKat 

Xavier Roberts is the reason I started sewing, he was my inspiration. I made my first doll at age 6 and haven’t stopped since9 minutes ago from web

EelKat 

because I had already been following Xavier’s doll making career for about 8 years prior to the invention of the Cabbage Patch Dolls 10 minutes ago from web

EelKat 

I was one of the few kids in New England to get a first year Cabbage Patch Doll right off the trucks from the first shipment, because11 minutes ago from web

EelKat 

I was a BIG – HUGE Xavier Roberts fan in the 1970s – and yes, that means in the 1982 CPK craze I ended up with 3 first year dolls 12 minutes ago from web

EelKat 

and the reason for my Xavychup email, ID, and the inspiration for the name of my dollS: The Xavychups13 minutes ago from web

EelKat 

Xavier Roberts btw is the reason why I collect Xaviers have dozens of pets named Xavier, collect Xavier friends on FaceBook,14 minutes ago from web

EelKat 

plus I think I’ve decided on a 12″ baby doll size for the second set of patterns – similar in style to Xavier Roberts “Little People”15 minutes ago from web

EelKat 

wonders why my @zazzle dashboard says they paid 2 days ago, but paypal has no record of it — ??? delayed processing ???19 minutes ago from web

EelKat 

taking a break from working on my @zazzle shop20 minutes ago from web

EelKat 

  

heading back to @Zazzle - got more products to move to categories, plus new products to make, & layout to rearrangeabout 7 hours ago from web

Waiting for Emmett to come.

http://twitter.com/EelKat
http://www.facebook.com/EelKat
http://eknano.blogspot.com
http://eelkat.wordpress.com
http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/132659
http://www.scriptfrenzy.org/user/132659

New Keychains from Copper Cockeral

Photography, Art, and Designs by Maine artist and photographer Wendy C Allen aka EelKat © 1978 – Present

The keychain choices below represent some of the different designs and themes created EelKat for Copper Cockeral Cards & Gifts A Twighlight Manor Company.

Please Click Each Keyring Below To View It In A Larger Size

Celebrate our 6 year anniversary with us! (Selling art on Zazzle since 2004!)

This is the sister gallery to The Pidgie Fund, both of which are owned by The Twighlight Manor Press.

Other galleries I run include: The Rabbit Hole and Old Orchard Beach, Maine Photography.

My mom and 3 brothers each have their own Zazzle Galleries, so be sure to check out their work as well @
Tiddledeewinks
FlashAllen
The Juiceman
Johnny 5 Allen

You can find out How I Became An Artist.

For those of you who have asked what I use to create my art work, here is info about My Art Equipment, and for those just starting out, I recommend using these books because they are the Best Art Instruction Books and the ones I use myself.

You can find out more about me @ Who is This EelKat Person Anyways?. And you can find out more about Copper Cockeral @Copper Cockeral Cards & Gifts

Thank you for visiting my sites.

~~EK

Like my designs? Want to sew cloths, tote bags, curtains, and pillows to match? Now you can using my line of custom fabrics created using the same designs sold here on Zazzle! http://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/eelkat Fabrics available in clothing, quilting, designer, or upholstery weights. Prices starting at just $18 a yard. Do you see one of my drawings that you like and want made into fabric? Let me know. All of my paintings will eventually become available as fabric, but it’s a long process, so if there’s one you want to see come out sooner than others, just tell me. Thanks!

More thoughts on writing doll patterns

Tweets for you to read bottom to top on.

EelKat 

I like making doll houses – if they didn’t cost so much money upfront to build, I might consider selling themless than 5 seconds ago from web

EelKat 

of course I may decide to make extra sets of dolls to sell – we’ll see how long each set takes to makeless than 5 seconds ago from web

EelKat 

yep, I’ll be making several different sets of dolls – I know what I’m like, one set will never be enough less than a minute ago from web

EelKat 

I think it would be a perfect house for the seven dwarfs to live in actually or Red Riding Hood’s grandmother2 minutes ago from web

EelKat 

It’s very “fairy tale” so I’m thinking of making sets of fairy tale dolls as well as the gnome family3 minutes ago from web

EelKat 

and after about 12 years of customization, it’s not the Glencroft House any more 4 minutes ago from web

EelKat 

my doll house started out in life as a “Glencroft Kit” if any one is familiar with doll houses, but was recut and altered by me4 minutes ago from web

EelKat 

so I’m going to call the doll pattern “Laughing Gnome Hollow” after the name of the doll house7 minutes ago from web

EelKat 

my doll house is sort of like a “hobbit house” but not in a hill, I designed it as a gnome house named Laughing Gnome Hollow8 minutes ago from web

EelKat 

So the second set will be smaller sized – I’m thinking 8″ like Rose Petal or 11″ like Rainbow Bright sizes, maybe I’ll do both10 minutes ago from web

EelKat 

I won’t making any more of my big 18″ – 30″ dolls any time soon though, just because they take up so much time to make & room to store12 minutes ago from web

EelKat 

than, I’m going to remake the SAME dolls on a larger, child’s-play-doll scale, though not sure what size I’ll go with yet13 minutes ago from web

EelKat 

so, I’m working on a set of 1/12 scale dolls, which I won’t be selling, but I will be selling the pattern for once they are finished14 minutes ago from web

EelKat 

the doll house weighs about 75lbs and is very hard to move, but I never made the dolls to go in it15 minutes ago from web

EelKat 

it’s got real moss growing on the roof, and a stone fire place build out of fish tank gravel and mortar15 minutes ago from web

EelKat 

the doll house is huge and has taken years and hundreds of dollars to build – it’s a stucco and bean house with live cherry trees and16 minutes ago from web

EelKat 

I’ve made tons of 1/12 scale dolls before, but never did make the gnome/troll/fairy set to go with my ever growing 1/12 scale doll house18 minutes ago from web

EelKat 

making more doll pattern sketches – I’ve decided to make a set of 6″ doll house ones ( 1/12 scale) first

Waiting for Emmett to come.

http://twitter.com/EelKat
http://www.facebook.com/EelKat
http://eknano.blogspot.com
http://eelkat.wordpress.com
http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/132659
http://www.scriptfrenzy.org/user/132659

Etsy RE: A vent regarding hand knitted items….

A vent regarding hand knitted items….

LesTricotsDuCoeur says: I’m a knitter, and everything in my shop is hand knitted (not machine knitted, HAND knitted). I spend numerous hours working on a single piece, and I pay good money for nice wool and fiber to work with. I think I should be able to set a fair price for my work, and get good business. But how can I do it when everywhere on Etsy I find elaborate pieces selling at ridiculously low prices? Too low prices is killing the market for everyone. This isn’t Walmart. This is ETSY, a place for handcrafters. Handmade items are pieces of art. So why do I find 6′ handknitted scarves selling for $20??? A pair or elaborate mittens going for $17? This is crazy. When I pay $20 for a skein of Merino wool, am I supposed to sell a piece I worked 10 hours on $25 because the competition is selling theirs $26? This is a message to handknitters (and to any other crafters that recognise themselves in this)…. PLEASE do not sell your creations short. You are not doing anyone a favor, especially not yourself. Posted at 1:54 am, January 7 2010 EST -

	EelKat says:
	I agree! and it’s not just knitted stuff either! I’ve seen people selling rag dolls for $3 THREE DOLLARS! OMG! You can’t even get a fat quarter of fabric for $3 any more and these dolls take a couple of yards just for the dresses! The should be getting something like $300 for the doll not $3 I’ve seen a couple of $100 doll houses too. How do you make a doll house for that much? Materials alone for the average doll house cost around a thousand dollars. It’s crazy to sell a full size wooden, furnished, scale doll house for ANYTHING less than $2,000 These people must be independently wealthy millionaires to be able to afford to buy the materials than sell the items for a fraction of the supply costs. I mean, sure, I’d love to sell at lower costs too, but, unlike them, I’m not independently wealthy and I have bills to pay and a family to feed. Yes, I agree as others said, creating items is good therapy, but what good did the therapy of creating the item do, when the cost of materials bankrupts you and causes more stress than you had to begin with? I don’t worry about them taking sales away from me though, because everything I make is a one of a kind item. A work of art. People who want art, will pay whatever price you charge high or low, because they know they have too, because there is not another one like it in the world and they CAN’T find it cheaper elsewhere. Just as you noticed knitting because you knit, I noticed rag dolls and doll houses because that’s what I make.
	Posted at 12:13 pm, January 7 2010 EST

Waiting for Emmett to come.

http://twitter.com/EelKat
http://www.facebook.com/EelKat
http://eknano.blogspot.com
http://eelkat.wordpress.com
http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/132659
http://www.scriptfrenzy.org/user/132659

Etsy Twitter Directory

 

Do you tweet??

adrienneaudrey says: …and if so i’d like to know how you are using twitter to your advantage. I started up a twitter account for myself yesterday : @adrienneaudrey This is what I have done so far: Followed as many esty sellers as I can and followed their followers ( I am following 198 and have 48 following me so far) and tweeted links to my shop and my newly listed items. How have you used Twitter succesfully? Is there anything else I should be doing? thanks:) Posted at 11:52 pm, January 6 2010 EST -

	EelKat says:
	I use Twitter the way it was intended when it was created – as a classic chat room. In other words I just log in and start chattering about anything that pops into my head – the weathers, my cats, my latest project, music I’m listening too, movies I’m watching, hopes, dreams, desires, etc.  No matter when I am online there is always dozens of random strangers also online talking about the same things I’m talking about at that moment. I daily end up having conversations with absolute total strangers, lol! I end up talking about weird random nothingness with strangers and have made several friends out of it. I don’t think of Twitter as a marketing tool. I think of it as a place to unwind and take a load of stress off, by just talking with any one willing to listen to me. In other words, I use it as it’s category says it is: for social networking. I joined less than a year ago and now have nearly 3,000 followers. I do not seek out followers, I simply follow back those whom followed me first.
	Posted at 8:18 am, January 7 2010 EST

New & Improved Etsy Twitter Directory

PinkPolishDesign says: For about a year I’ve housed an Directory of Etsy artists who twitter. We are up to 419 enteries and growing! I just recently moved the whole list to a more managable format and it is now alphabetized! So check it out, follow some amazing artists and post here if you would like to be added to the list! http://www.pblog.pinkpolishdesign.com Posted at 1:38 pm, January 4 2010 EST -

	EelKat says:
	mine is http://twitter.com/eelkat Be warned though that I tweet a lot – A LOt meaning I passed 13,000 tweets in 4 months a lot – it’s not unusual for me to hit the 100 tweets per hour limit multiple times per day once I get chatting with some one, esp during NaNoWriMo in November and Script Frenzy in April, when you’ll find me on twitter round the clock. I have actually had folks send me nasty messages than unfollow me, saying that I tweet too much It because I use Twitter the way Twitter was created to be used – as a chat room not as a marketing tool, so I get into lengthy full blown conversations with complete strangers about absolutely everything under the sun, all the time.
	Posted at 11:46 am, January 7 2010 EST -

Waiting for Emmett to come.

http://twitter.com/EelKat
http://www.facebook.com/EelKat
http://eknano.blogspot.com
http://eelkat.wordpress.com
http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/132659
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Etsy RE: Your thoughts on raising prices?

Home > Community > Forums > Business Topics > Your thoughts on raising prices? Business Topics 1 post 1 Your thoughts on raising prices? EelKat says: I currently sell small 6″ to 8″ tall goddess dolls, though other items will be added later. I’m just getting started here so I decided to focus on just one item to start out. Anyways, I was listing them at $24 each and selling nothing. After talking on a few home business and work at home mom forums (I only just found the Etsy forum this morning so I hadn’t asked here yet) it was suggested to me that if I raised the price I would have better sales. The theory being that a higher price tells the customer they are getting a better quality item. So, I raised the price to $28 and immediately sold two dolls. Since than though no other dolls have sold. Asking advice again, this time I was told to raise the price again, but to do it differently this time around. This time the advice said to offer free shipping, so that the customers perceive that they are getting a sort of discount. However, at the same time, I was to add the shipping cost to the price of the doll, thus I still get paid the same amount, but that the customer thinks they are getting a higher quality item AND saving money by not paying shipping. In other words, if I was selling a $20 doll with $5 shipping, I should change it to a $25 doll with free shipping. Okay, so this morning I changed all of my items to $32 each with free shipping. Now I’ll wait and see what happens. But while I’m waiting, I was wondering if any one else has had any experience with doing this. (Raising prices in an attempt to boost sales.) If so, did it help your sales? One person suggested I double my prices, thus selling each doll for $40 – $60 price range, because that would boost the “OOAK art doll” feel to my dolls. That would translate into $10 per inch of doll! I’m not sure yet if I dare put the prices up that high or not. But I searched what’s listed by others and found that $50 to $75 is not uncommon for 6″ tall dolls here on Etsy!  Would I actually sell more dolls if I doubled my prices into the $60 range? It seems like I’d sell even less, but than again, maybe that advice is correct. Maybe I would sell more if the price was double. I just don’t know. What do you think? What would you do? If it was your shop, would you raise the prices that much? Have you ever drastically raised prices and ended up with better sales? Do you think this is good advice or bad advice? Posted at 9:23 am, January 7 2010 EST -

Waiting for Emmett to come.

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Etsy RE: Sewing patterns- PDF or printed copy?

Sewing patterns- PDF or printed copy?

EelKat says: I personally prefer printed patterns. PDFs are way more trouble than they are worth. I have trouble with pdf – for some reason every time I try to load a pdf file it freezes my computer and I have to reboot. Half the time my email bounces pdf attachments to the spam box. Additionally – I do’t like that I have to pay $7.95 for a pdf, than $300 for a printer, $25 for black ink, $40 for color ink, and $5 for paper. Than I have to deal scaling the pdf so it prints the right size, paper jams, memory overload errors, and every other weird thing my computer can think of to do to prevent me from printing up my pattern. With a pre-printed paper pattern the $7.95 is the only cost I have to pay for my pattern and I don’t have to spend 5 hours fighting with my computer. Posted at 7:35 am, January 7 2010 EST -

Waiting for Emmett to come.

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Etsy RE: Quit Your Day Job…..What Is Your Day Job?

I just found out Etsy has a forum. You can expect to see me less often on other places for the next few weeks while I go through reading the entire site. There 5 minutes and I’m already posting answers!

Quit Your Day Job…..What Is Your Day Job?

indiepin says: Hello! well after a recent Storque reading binge, I read most of the QYDJ articles and it got me intrigued as to what most Etsians do for their “real” day job (if they’ve not already quit and gone full time on Etsy, that is). I’ll start, and I’d love to know what you folks do! I graduated from University with a Psychology degree in the summer into the harsh economic climate of the recession and so at the moment Etsy is my main “job”. However, I am also a professional magician, so I end up spending most evenings working events! Who’s next? Posted at 1:18 pm, January 6 2010 EST -

When people ask me what I do for a living, I tell them: I’m an artist and author.

My blog’s bio-intro reads:

“You have reached the official blog of Wendy C. Allen aka EelKat. I am an author, artist, fashion designer, doll maker, rooster and feral cat rescuer, Squidoo addict, alien contactee, 5 time NaNoWriMo winner, CosPlayer, Steampunk life actor, huge Sesshomaru fan, vegetarian animal rights activist, and the original outspoken Proctor and Gamble Boycotter, who lives on a farm in Old Orchard Beach, Maine.”

Yeah, basically what it says there, that’s my “day job”.

About 90% of my income comes from my art sales on Zazzle.

My second largest source of income is Squidoo but this is keeping in mind that I am listed as one of Squidoo’s top 10 highest paid members as well, due to the fact that I am there #3 member for having made the most lenses at 507 articles written and more on the way – I am in the extreme minority on Squidoo, most folks barely make a few cents per month, so don’t go quit your day job than join Squidoo thinking you’ll make a full time income there like I do, because out of 800,000+ members there are less than 30 of us that make that much money there!

In addition to writing non-fiction and how to stuff online, offline I’m an author of short stories, chap books, novellas, horror, sci-fi, romance, The Twighlight Manor Series, and a couple of novels. I also write doll pattern booklets and non-fiction books about ufology, alien abduction, and crytozoology.

I also have been an Avon Sales Rep since 1997, but I basically sell it so that I can buy their products for my own use at huge discounts, so it’s not really a big source of income.

Additionally I’m an on call temp/seasonal sales associate and fitting room attendant for Macy’s, so I work there off and on for a total of about 8 weeks a year, usually during the Christmas season.

The rest of my income is spread out across CafePress, Associated Content, eBay, Amazon, LuLu, LinkShare Affiliate Programs, and of course Etsy is my newest addition to my income stream and hopefully in the long run will become my top source of income.

My goal is to have my Etsy store bringing in $5,000 per year by 2012, and expanding that goal to $20,000 per year in the long run once I’ve got it fully set up and established.

In short, my career is to do whatever pops into my head at the moment and find a way to make money at it for a strange assortment of multi-streaming incomes, so I don’t end up having all my eggs in one basket.

Waiting for Emmett to come.

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NaNoWriMo RE: Trying to earn money in alternative ways?

RE: Trying to earn money in alternative ways?

[quote=DLDzioba]So, I work fast food for a living currently. I hate (with a capital hate) my job and I would love more than anything to get out of there. So this year I’m going to try and find another way to make a living. Phase one is I am making and am going to be attempting to sell jewelry both online and at the myriad of craft shows in my area. This scheme actually came courtesy of my mother and best friend who pointed out that since many people comment on the handmade pieces I wear I should try to sell something.


Step two will be to find a bookstore or library that is hiring as I’d love to work in a bookish environment. Sadly I’ve been working on step two for a few years now and one of my local bookstores just closed. But one can dream and I’ve got a much more solid idea of what I do not want to do thanks to my years of slinging chicken.


Step three is to quit my fast food job when the time comes. Can’t wait for that.




Very scary. Very Big.
I hope I can do it.
———-
[/quote]

Your Big Scary is similar to part of mine. (Part meaning that my list had I think 15 different goals on it, this being one of the fifteen. =P) I don’t know where I posted my list, I think it’s on the second or third page of the sticky thread for lists. Anyways . . .

I started making dolls in 1980. I make a lot of dolls. Big dolls, small dolls, from tiny micro mini doll house dolls to big 32″ dolls and everything in between. Here’s the kicker: I make my own patterns, so every one of my dolls is 100% one of a kind. It’s an expensive and very time consuming hobby. Skipping ahead to Big Scary.

For 2009, one of my goals was to open an Etsy account and start selling my smaller (thus easy to ship) dolls. I created a new doll pattern just for that goal. Life got in the way, seeing how the publication of my 2008 NaNoWriMo incited my LDS bishop to threaten to excommunicate me if I went ahead with the book publication. In the end I set up my Etsy store last spring, than spent the summer trying to deal with a lot of local hate and prejudices, and was not able to get around to sewing up the dolls until this fall, a few weeks before NaNoWriMo. I did complete my goal – I opened my store, I finished a few dolls, I started selling them. Goal complete.

Now moving on to 2010. As a result of church members arriving at my place of work and harassing my manager, I no longer have a job. Thus the need to add job searching to my list of 2010 Big Scary goals. But than I’m thinking, you know what? I really, really, really, like sewing cloth dolls and designing patterns for cloth dolls, and well, why not instead of focusing on searching for a job, I focus on turning my doll making hobby into a full time career?

So, the major goal of my 2010 Big Scary is this:

– Take my Etsy store and turn it into a full time business
– Focus on patterns over dolls (they sell better)
– Get my patterns written down and printed up
– Design a new set of dolls/patterns each moth until I have a wide selection to sell

My goal is to turn this into a business that pays no less than $20,000 per year (I’ve checked user stats, this is not an uncommon income for Etsy sellers – at least not for the ones who are really serious about Etsy and handmade crafts as a career.) Of course, that is a big, big goal, because the average Etsy seller makes less than $1,000 per year! Not very many Etsy sellers reach the $5,000 per year income line, and only a few hundred are earning $20,000+ per year. However, the fact that others ARE doing it, means that it can be done if you have the will and drive to stick with it and the willingness to do the marketing and research and product development needed to finally find the item that people will buy. And I’m pretty positive I can do that.

So, since I already had this idea, pretty well mapped out by December, I was ready to go once January got here, and as such, I am well on my way to getting this goal completed!

Since January 1st I have done this:

So far I have got one pattern nearly completed, and the cover of the pattern book completed, the layout for the pattern book nearly completed, and am ready to have the first run printed up as soon as it’s finished. In other words, my first pattern should be in print and for sale by the first week of February providing everything goes as planned.

More dolls are made, several of them just got listed, with more to be listed soon, and more to be made after that.

I’ve started sketching out designs for a series of fairy and mermaid dolls, which I will start sewing, in a few weeks, and writing the pattern as I go along.

If I continue at the rate I’m going now, by the end of the year, I should have 7 or 8 or maybe more patterns finished, printed, and for sale. That translates in to a least 500 sales at about $10 each for a total of $5,000 minimum income by December. (I don’t plan on reaching the $20,000 goal in the first year, but I think by 2013, I should be bringing in no less than that per year via my Etsy store.)

Of course, the $20,000 goal is not just figuring in sales of doll patterns, but also the dolls which sell for $30 to $2,000 a piece, as well as selling other items I sew, including dresses, CosPlay outfits, and Halloween costumes, however, I don’t plan on adding those sections to my Etsy store until 2011 and 2012. Like I said, this is a long term goal which I plan on progressively expanding in small steps, until I eventually reach the point that this is my full time income.

Most of 2009 was spent in market research and writing up a projected 5 year business plan, while setting up the basics. Now that those things are out of the way, 2010 is going to be spent in product development and “laying the groundwork” while bringing in a supplemental income. 2011 and 2012 will be spent expanding out of a start up business into a full fledged business, and hopefully by 2013 my sewing/pattern making/Etsy career will be seeing big time profits.

So, there you have it. My long term Big Scary.

Waiting for Emmett to come.

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I think I have found the answer to why local church members and leaders call me a witch and set fire to my home.

I think I have found an answer to the vandalism, arsine, drive by shootings, witchcraft accusations, and other lesser forms of harassment that have happened at the hands of local church members these past 9 years: ***People often grudge others what they cannot enjoy themselves. -Aesop ***

In other words, my lifestyle is something they want and can not have, thus in their frustration they try to take it from me, and yet, in everything they have done, they have not, nor can not succeed. Why?

Because I unlike them live my life. I do the things I want to do, when I want to do them, how I want to do them. I am not controlled by a job or a church.

I think they feel trapped by their jobs, and trapped by their church. If they want to drop every thing and spend 10 hours on the beach, they do not have the freedom to do so, like I do.

If they want to wear 15th century ball gowns or fairy princess costumes to run to the grocery store, they can not do so, because they fear ridicule by their peers.

They have huge debts: house, cars, credit cards, bills for frivolous things. I own no man any thing.

When they burned down my house, the last thing they expected was for me to take to living under a tarp and continue on doing things no different than before. The lost of a house would have destified them, thus they thought it would me. But their fault was thinking that I care about material possessions – like they do.

I live what one woman once called: “the life of a wild and free feral child”, which she than added: “I wish I had your freedom”.

And that is what is boils down to: I have the freedom to do absolutely anything that pops into my head, something they do not have, something they want, but fear to pursue, because they are too blinded by the risks of my lifestyle to see the benefits of it. Because they can not have the freedom I have, they made (and continue to make) many attempts to take that from me. And yet they continue to fail. Why?

I will tell you why. I live my life to the letter, by Jesus’ words: To be the lily of the field. Not familiar with it? Look it up. Want to see a modern day translation of that? Watch the movie: You Can’t Take It With You.

If you have ever read Jesus’ words or watched the movie: “You Can’t Take It With You”, than you will know what I mean when I say this:

I am a lily.

Waiting for Emmett to come.

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Last night’s fire = Human Stupidity

Yep – tweets again, so you got to read from bottom to top.

1. EelKat 
     

   So last’s night’s fire has been chalked down to human stupidity. Why am I not surprised?less than 5 seconds ago from web

   • Delete

2. EelKat 

   I can’t believe there are people so stupid that they would consider drinking or smoking – no one their brain cells are dead2 minutes ago from web

3. EelKat 

   Do you realize how much of an idiot some one has to be to drink or smoke let alone do both? I am surrounded by freaking imbeciles.3 minutes ago from web

4. EelKat 

   I use parts of my brain that less than .0025% of the rest of the world use, and people wonder why I can not have a conversation with them6 minutes ago from web

5. EelKat 

   Do you have any idea how hard it is to find someone I can talk to on my level when my IQ is shared by only .003% of the population?7 minutes ago from web

6. EelKat 

   show me someone I can actually have a stimulating conversation with and I’ll have contact with them8 minutes ago from web

7. EelKat 

   and people wonder why I avoid contact with people – yeah – I’ve got Einstein’s IQ and you want me to hob knob with idiots?10 minutes ago from web

8. EelKat 

   I wonder if it was the same drunk woman who was trying to rush into the burning building screaming that she had left her cigarettes inside?13 minutes ago from web

9. EelKat 

   Well, update on the fire – it was a burning couch upstairs – some drunk woman fell asleep with a cigarette13 minutes ago from web

10. EelKat 

    They now say that the storm “SHOULD” arrive before midnight – *should*? They don’t know?14 minutes ago from web

11. EelKat 

    the weatherman is now saying the storm is late and has not hit us yet – Well duh! Anyone looking outside can see that much!16 minutes ago from web

Waiting for Emmett to come.

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fire next door

Tweets about the fire at the Homer’s Sports Bar Building next door. These are tweets so you have to read from bottom to top.

1. EelKat 

   people are weird – the building is burning down and she’s freaking out because her cigarettes are still in the building – WTH???less than 5 seconds ago from web

2. EelKat 

   there’s a drunk woman from the bar running around screaming hysterically, because she left her cigarettes inside and she wants to go back inless than a minute ago from web

3. EelKat 

   don’t know what they are doing now2 minutes ago from web

4. EelKat 

   Biddeford Central Station District 1 (that’s what it says across my bedroom window – the ladder truck is right up against the building)3 minutes ago from web

5. EelKat 

   it’s not snowing much right now, so that helps5 minutes ago from web

6. EelKat 

   they must be freezing out there – all that water, in this snow storm and blizzard winds 6 minutes ago from web

7. EelKat 

   they are laying the hoses out on the hill they only do that when the hoses freeze & they need to drain the water out before it turns to ice7 minutes ago from web

8. EelKat 

   spotlights just came back on – it’s brighter than high noon out there now (it’s 10PM here)10 minutes ago from web

9. EelKat 

   the firemen are checking the roof now to make sure the fire is actually out and did not get pushed into the walls12 minutes ago from web

10. EelKat 

    there’s a bar and 3 businesses on the first floor of the building thats why so many people are out there, they were all in the building14 minutes ago from web

11. EelKat 

    there’s about 50 or 60 people standing out front here watching the firemen work16 minutes ago from web

12. EelKat 

    ambulance left, didn’t take any one so I guess every one got out ok17 minutes ago from web

13. EelKat 

    the firemen are rolling up hoses now19 minutes ago from web

14. EelKat 

    I’ll bet the landlord of that place is getting tired of putting a new front door on his building19 minutes ago from web

15. EelKat 

    the 2nd time the police did it it going in on an ambulance call; now the firemen broke it down to get in20 minutes ago from web

16. EelKat 

    the 1st time a local gang did it during a fight20 minutes ago from web

17. EelKat 

    that is the third time in as many months, that the front door has been smashed22 minutes ago from web

18. EelKat 

    they are taking down the big spotlights now, I guess that means they are getting ready to leave23 minutes ago from web

19. EelKat 

    there are 5 fire trucks27 minutes ago from web

20. EelKat 

    they came out with 2 people + the fire seems to be out now27 minutes ago from web

21. EelKat 

    the fireman can’t get up the stairs so are going in through a 3rd floor window via the ladder truck now42 minutes ago from web

22. EelKat 

    police cars and ambulances driving up now42 minutes ago from web

23. EelKat 

    the ladder truck just pulled up on the sidewalk in front of my bedroom window – the 3 people missing live on the 3rd floor43 minutes ago from web

24. EelKat 

    fireman are trying to do a head count of every body say they are missing 3 people who are supposed to be there they went in to look for themabout 1 hour ago from web

25. EelKat 
      

    the house next door of in flames – our street just got surrounded by fire trucks – it’s an 8 family buildingabout 1 hour ago from web

Waiting for Emmett to come.

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Living Dead Voodoo Mermaid Dolls

My tweets on writing a doll book. Yes, these are writing related. I’m writing a doll making how to book and this is me brainstorming ideas for which dolls to include in the book. But anyways, they are tweets so you have to read them from the bottom up instead of from the top down, because that’s just the way tweets are. =P

1. EelKat 

   I like that one – JuJu Mermaidsless than 5 seconds ago from web

2. EelKat 

   How about JuJu Mermaids? Sounds like Fiji without being Fiji and means the same thing as the MerZombie or Voodoo or Living Dead Mermaidhalf a minute ago from web

3. EelKat 

   Maybe I could call the “live” ones “Sea Goddess Dolls” and the “dead” ones “MerZombie Dolls”?2 minutes ago from web

4. EelKat 

   I really like the “Sea Goddess” name though3 minutes ago from web

5. EelKat 

   They don’t look like monkey fish though, so maybe Fiji Mermaid wouldn’t fit either.4 minutes ago from web

6. EelKat 

   Fiji Mermaid isn’t trademarked is it? I could call them Fiji Mermaids.5 minutes ago from web

7. EelKat 

   MerZombies maybe?6 minutes ago from web

8. EelKat 
     

   sea goddess dolls? that sounds better, but doesn’t match the creepy dead mermaid feel7 minutes ago from web

   • Delete

9. EelKat 

   living dead mermaid dolls sounds better, but I’m pretty sure that “living dead ____ dolls” is trademarked so I can’t use it8 minutes ago from web

10. EelKat 

    voodoo mermaid dolls or mermaid voodoo dolls, neither sounds right, does it?9 minutes ago from web

11. EelKat 

    drew up some test patterns for my mermaid dolls still not sure what to call them I don’t like “voodoo” & isn’t “living dead” trademarked?10 minutes ago from web

EelKat Wendy C. Allen it’s going to have to start snowing a lot more if the weather guy wants me to believe this is a blizzard. A windstorm does not a blizzard make – you need snow WITH the wind. *SHEESH* Half the snow that fell this morning is already melted – there’s barely 8 inches left on the ground now! WTH are they going all freak out for? This is NOT a blizzard. I’m extremely disappointed in the inaccuracy of the weather reports.

20 minutes ago · Comment · Like

EelKat Wendy C. Allen 

granted, that does not change the fact that I have a 500 foot driveway/path-to-barn to shovel – back in from shoveling, at least the temp is above freezing today, it was -10F when I had to shovel last week

17 minutes ago · 

1. 1. EelKat 
        

      I guess you can tell I specialize in evil dolls right? I call them my : “Bunny’s Evil Minions” dollsless than 5 seconds ago from web

      • Delete

   2. EelKat 

      is thinking of making a series of dolls for the dark bloody Grimm’s tales tooless than a minute ago from web

   3. EelKat 

      I’m an anti-anti, I’m anti the antis 2 minutes ago from web

   4. EelKat 

      plus evil living dead voodoo Santa Claus dolls and a set of Golliwogs after reading that anti-Golliwog article today3 minutes ago from web

   5. EelKat 

      evil blood thirsty mermaid dolls – that sounds like something Steven King would write a book about LOL!8 minutes ago from web

   6. EelKat 

      now – did I just prove I’m old or does anyone else out there remember evil bunnies with holy hand grenades?9 minutes ago from web

   7. EelKat 

      evil mermaids, like evil bunnies with holy hand grenades =P10 minutes ago from web

   8. EelKat 

      they are voodoo mermaids or living dead mermaids or whatever it is that you call mermaid dolls that look like they belong in a horror movie11 minutes ago from web

   9. EelKat 

      I have ideas for a new series of dolls – got to make the patterns and than some test dolls – well be doing that this week12 minutes ago from web

   10. EelKat 

       I guess getting snowed in is a good excuse for me to get some sewing and pattern designing done this week, right?13 minutes ago from web

   11. EelKat 

       if the weather guys are right – by this time tomorrow, we are going to have lots and lots and lots of snow – up to 18″ per hour they said14 minutes ago from web

   12. 

Waiting for Emmett to come.

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Gollywogs are supposed to be humans???????

·

EelKat Wendy C. Allen Interesting. I just realized for the first time the a Golliwog was supposed to be an African-American Human. Really? They certainly don’t look like a human of any race at all! I always thought they were non-human mythical cryptid creatures like gnomes and fairies and leprechauns.

Police order shopkeeper to remove golliwogs from window | Mail Online

www.dailymail.co.uk

A 62-year-old shopkeeper was told by police to remove golly dolls from her window display – because they were offensive. Moira Pickering was warned that she risked breaching race hate laws if she failed to take them down

48 minutes ago · Comment · Like · Share

EelKat Wendy C. Allen 

Does that mean that Caucasians should have everyone with a garden gnome on their lawn arrested for displaying racists dolls?

46 minutes ago · 

EelKat Wendy C. Allen 

I suppose this also means I should go to jail for referring to myself as a Kickapoo Indian instead of calling myself a Native American, right?

2 seconds ago · 

Waiting for Emmett to come.

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Tweets on writing a doll sewing book

EelKat 

and here’s the back cover of the pattern:http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y79/eelkat/BookCoverBack2a.jpgI like that it is in colorless than 5 seconds ago from web

EelKat 

writing up sewing/pattern instructions is harder than it looks though – sewing the dolls is much easier1 minute ago from web

EelKat 

depending on how long it takes for the printer to print and ship them to me3 minutes ago from web

EelKat 

I should have actual copies of my pattern printed up and listed for sale in the next few weeks, depending on how long it takes for th3 minutes ago from web

EelKat

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y79/eelkat/BookCoverFront2a.jpghere is a preview of the cover for my new doll patern4 minutes ago from web

EelKat 

try it again5 minutes ago from web

EelKat 

that last tweet got cut off 5 minutes ago from web

EelKat 

The Xavychup Goddess Doll Pattern is the first one I’m getting made uphttp://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y79/eelkat/BookCoverFront2a.jpg5 minutes ago from web

EelKat 

I have decided to get several of my doll patterns printed up and will be selling them on Etsy in a few weeks, once I got them in8 minutes ago from web

EelKat 

after asking other @Etsy sellers what sells best (finished dolls or doll patterns) I have decided to get several of my doll patterns printed8 minutes ago from web

EelKat 

I am supposed to be working on my doll patterns tonight not Tweeting and Zazzleing =P10 minutes ago from web

EelKat 

it’s actually my #2 best selling item – #1 and #3 are both T-shirts with quotes on them12 minutes ago from web

EelKat 

here it is if you want to see which one it is:http://www.zazzle.com/old_orchard_beach_maine_usa_postage-17292129963260431414 minutes ago from web

EelKat 

I just didn’t realize it was the third top seller on the entire @zazzle website! OMG! YAY!15 minutes ago from web

EelKat 

well, I did sell 9 copies of the one that’s #3 on @zazzle in one day this past summer, so, yeah, it is a best seller15 minutes ago from web

EelKat 

when you search @zazzle by most popular, for “Maine” postage – numbers 3 & 4 come up with stamps by me!!!16 minutes ago from web

Waiting for Emmett to come.

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RE: BurdaStyle: Where do you find sewing inspiration?

Well as is one of my usual habits, I was zipping around BurdaStyle checking out the new stuff, when I found THIS. Well, as not my usual style I decided to comment. I rarely ever say anything over there, so no one even knows I’m there half the time! LOL! Anyways, here is my answer:

***Where do you find sewing inspiration?***

EVERYWHERE! My mom was a seamstress, sew I was already sewing at age 6. I was 16 when I graduated from a fashion design college. In the 20+ years since, I have created tons of patterns and sew all my own fashions.

I not only create my own patterns, but I also design my own fabrics as well. I paint up watercolors and than get short runs of the fabric printed up. I get ideas for a lot og my designs from nature: birds, cats, the sky, waterfalls, trees – everything inspires me to paint. Than the fabric made from the paintings inspire the flow of the dress pattern as well.

Erte is my biggest inspiration. Much of my designs are reinterpretations of his designs. I just love his art deco and flapper styles.

Also, Japanese Kimono, esp those from the Momoyama period (1500’s). I love sewing kimono, because the lines are simple and allow for display of big bold fabric prints, which thus allows me to create huge print fabric designs as well.

***What magazines, websites, books do you look at for project ideas?***

Dover Books are my #1 source of inspiration. You see, I’m a life actor, which I means I CosPlay 24/7/365 and have for years. My daily wear consists of recreations of garb from the 1500’s – 1800’s as well as the 1920’s. Dover reprints tons of French, fashion illustrations, vintage paper dolls, Goody Lady, etc. Of course they are the ones who reprint Etre’s fashion prints as well.

National Geographic and Smithsonian Museum books are huge sources of inspiration as well. I get lots of ideas from cultural photos and antique paintings. I enjoy creating ethnic and historic bases patterns.

And than of course there’s my #1 source of inspiration: comic books. Yep, you heard me: comic books! I’m a huge fan of comic books, manga, graphic novels, super heroes, etc, and well, like I said, I’m really big into CosPlay, so of course a lot of what I design was inspired by comic books.

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

Obsessed? I’m Not Obsessed… REALLY, I’m not!

When Next You See Me I’ll Look Like This:

————-
If you liked reading this blog and want to read more stuff written by me, I have lots of websites, where you can read other things I write, here are a few of the ones I like the best:

All about Lord Sesshomaru’s garb & Making a Lord Sesshomaru Costume. Plus, Sesshomaru & Rin and making Rin’s Costume; and this is for anyone who needs help Creating Character Profiles for their stories or for their SCA persona.

Categories: About me · Anachronism · Anachronist · Business · CosPlay · Gothic · Life · Lifestyle · Maine · Old Orchard Beach · SCA · Wendy C. Allen · comic books · cosplay in public · costume making · costumer · costumes · creativity · cross dressing · crossplay · drag queen · dressmaking · fabric · fashion · fashion design · fun things to do · inspiration · interesting facts · life blogging · medieval · my thoughts on… · painting · pattern making · patterns · sewing · sewing a costume · sewing a kimono · sewing advice · theater

Tagged: About me, Anachronist, Black Bobcat Fashions, BurdaStyle, CosPlay, cosplay in public, dressmaking, EelKat, Erte, inspiration, Japan, kimono, pattern making, Purple Peacock Patterns, sewing, The Rabbit Hole, Wendy C. Allen

Waiting for Emmett to come.

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Misses my PNG friends.

Those who’ve followed me long enough will remember my older writing career, in the days when I was writing a curriculum for a farm school and translating books from English to Chimbu. Was just thinking about that today, and how so much more than just personal possessions was taken away from me by the vandals who made these past 7 years of my life a living hell.

In 2004 I was getting ready to go to PNG to set up a sort of “farming school” for a Chimbu Tribe that I had been corresponding with. I had already started writing the “curriculum” and was working with the tribe’s leader getting all the plans set up.

Unfortunately it was during that time that the flood hit and my dad ended up in the coma. All my plans got changed and I couldn’t go overseas because I had to stay and take care of my dad. It was a big disappointment for both me and the tribe.

I had planned on picking up my goal after my dad got better, but in the time since than, travel laws to PNG changed and now I can’t go at all. It is still my goal to do this, and hopefully the PNG gov laws will change back to allowing “missionary workers” to enter the country again, but no idea if or when that’ll ever happen now.

I had even learned their language (with the help of the tribe’s leader) and had books printed in their language, and was working to translate books into PNG/Chimbu Pigdin.

The tribe was some 500 miles from the nearest road, living on the side of a volcano, and had almost zero contact with “modern civilization”. It was one of the last tribes completely untouched by the world.

The flood/fire took away so much from me – and others. It was very upsetting because nearly 10 years of planning and research had been put into this project, and than overnight it was taken away.

Waiting for Emmett to come.

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How Does One Determin What Makes a Man Sexy?

I know, this is my writing blog and the last few posts have had nothing to do with writing. Sorry about that. This one is sort of a writing related comment and sort of not, depending on how you look at it. I’s sort f a research into writing, because one of the articles I wrote a while back was a list of my personal “Top 100 Sexiest Men Ever”. That list has since expanded and I’m currently moving it over to a Squidoo lens, which you can see in progress HERE. It’s taking me a while to build this lens seeing how it’s a “hobby” lens so I work on it in my spare time, but eventually I’ll have it finished.

Anyways, while I was working on this lens, I started thinking and wondering, if any of the guys on my list were on any of the “national” lists (People, Time, Rolling Stone, ect.), so I started searching and in my searching I found THIS ARTICLE which was commenting on the way these lists are made, and used the current list posted by some magazine I had never heard of before.

Interesting.

I actually only know 3 of the guys on that list. I made my own “top 100″ list a while back (only celebs on it, though there were a lot of local guys I would have put on it, if I had known their names! LOL!)

Anyways, folks who read my list complained that 90% of my list included dead guys they had never heard of before – Fred Astaire, Jerry Orbach, Liberace, Vincent Price, Yul Brynner, ect. or musicians that they said were not sexy enough – Serj Tainkian, Rob Zombie, Slash, ect.

They also complained that my list included men who seemed “too plain” or “average looking” and than about 40 of the men on my list were bald.

They also complained about the fact that there were 4 or 5 drag queens and transvestites on my list.

And finally, they complained that most of the pictures on my list were of men in their 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s, comments said that these same men looked better in their 20’s and 30’s and that I should have used younger pictures of them.

Yeah – I know, I’ve already been told this before, but: YES, I do like some pretty “strange” guys, and yes, I know they are guys most people would never put on a top 100 list, so yep, my top 100 list has men you are highly unlikely to find on typical top 100 sexy guys lists. So, nope, no reason to send me a message telling me I’m weird for likeling certain guys (esp Liberace, CC DeVille, Dee Snider, and Eddie Izzard, who for some odd reason seem to be the 4 that get the most raised eyebrows whenever any one sees them on my lists. Yes, I like these guys a lot, and yes, I do find them sexy. So yes, they ARE on my list.)

Well, you know what? I happen to like these older, plainer, more average looking men. Men are like wine, they get better with age. I also like drag queens, and who says those creepy emo goth heavy metal dudes are NOT sexy? And, I personally am one of those women who finds bald men sexy – in fact my SO of 22 years is a bald man who is 30 years older than me and I find him very sexy.

In other words, “sexy” is in the eye of the beholder and the men I found sexy, I guess most other women didn’t find sexy, while the lists of men they found sexy, well, I looked at those guys and thought: “Huh? Those guys look fake and plastic. I want my men to look real.”

So, yeah, long comment short, I agree with what this guy said in his article. You can’t have a 100 Top Sexiest Men that is a one list fits all. Every person has their own definition of what sexy is, and therefor when push comes to shove, every one is going to have a different set of men for their own personal Top 100. So, I think every body should go out there and write up their own personal list and post it online some where and than all the other women can check it out and see how each list compares to the big “national” lists. I’ll bet you find a lot of them are VERY different.

Waiting for Emmett to come.

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No Christmas this year (AGAIN) thanks to the ongoing spread of witchcraft rumors :(

I haven’t celebrated Christmas in years – no family, and no friends thanks to gossip and lies told by family to my friends. Very lonely, for years and years and years now. Only time I ever hear from any relatives it’s via long pages of hate, hell fire, and damnation – some of the letters are 60 to 70 pages long too. Both mail and email. I’ve had to change my email 34 times now because of it. It’s been 9 years since any one has said a kind word to me.

I fail to understand why they have this obsessive need to constantly send me messages of hate and scripture telling me I’m going to hell. It’s depressing, that the have nothing better to do than tell me how much they hate me.

I had to stop working at Macy’s because some of them actually took to showing up at work and giving my boss hell telling my manager how “evil” I was. Macy’s wouldn’t renew my contract when it ran out, because they said they couldn’t have workers who had “friends” who harassed the staff. It wasn’t even anyone I knew either. When I found out who it was, it was some guy from church who I’d never even meet before! He “just assumed” every thing he was being told about me was true and went off to tell as many people as he could. This sort of thing has been going on for 9 years now.

The latest rumor they are spreading about me says that I am a “Satan worshiping witch who kills animals to cast spells on church members resulting in terrible curses, illnesses, and deaths”. YIE! YIE YIE! These people are freaking nut cases! Obviously they KNOW NOTHING ABOUT ME! And what gets me is that folks actually believe them! OMG!

And near as I can tell, the only reason for any of it, is that I stopped attending church, and therefor I am now “the enemy” and “in liege with Satan” or so a few relatives have written and told me.

But you’d think after 9 years they’d get tired of it and find something else to do. NINE YEARS! OMG! They really need to get a life so they can get out of mine. SHEESH! I wish I knew how to get these freaks to stop it, because they are really disrupting my life, and frankly, I’m getting sick of them.

Waiting for Emmett to come.

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RE: Your Zazzle Gallery – ACCOUNT VERIFICATION (Copyright laws)

Your Zazzle Gallery – ACCOUNT VERIFICATION 2 pages: [1] 2
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meowee		Posted: Thursday, September 03, 2009 10:39:39 PM
Groups: Member Joined: 7/27/2007 Posts: 13		Hi all. I had a question. I keep getting an email from Zazzle containing the following….. Dear Zazzler, Thank you for becoming a contributor at Zazzle.com! We at Zazzle.com abide by all intellectual property rights (such as copyright, trademark and rights of publicity) as noted in our user agreement: http://www.zazzle.com/mk/policy/user_agreement,and Content Guidelines: http://zazzle.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/zazzle.cfg./enduser/std_adp.?p_faqid=143. We just had some quick questions about the designs submitted in our marketplace: 1. What are the sources of these images? Where did you find them? 2. Do you have permission to use these images for commercial resale? Failure to respond to these questions may result in the removal of your products from our marketplace and account being suspended by Zazzle. We look forward to your response! Best Regards,Content Management TeamZazzle.com, Inc. I answered them and said that most images I had scanned and some had been given to me. This still hasn’t satisfied them, so now I get a letter today saying. Thank you for allowing us to be of service to you. Subject—————————————————————Your Zazzle Gallery – ACCOUNT VERIFICATION Discussion Thread—————————————————————Response – 09/03/2009 01:21 Thank you for your email. What are the original sources of the images that were scanned or given to you? Do you have permission to use these for commercial resale? Best Regards, I wrote and said yes. I have asked 3 times if there is a SPECIFIC item to which they refer, but they won’t say. I have 100s of images I have saved over time and I cannot account for each and every one that I have since its been 10 years or so.. Also, I get another letter saying someone returned a shirt of mine. I asked them to go ahead and delete the item, altho I had not sold one of those shirts in well over six months. Do they do this on a regular basis just to remind you or am I in big trouble?? Thanks very much

I had this happen to me a couple of years ago because I have all the book covers and character illustrations from the Twighlight Manor series on one of my galleries. I of course am the creator of the series as well as the author of the books and the artist who did all of the illustrations.

I was stunned and pleased to get their email, because the books have been out of print since the 1980’s and they were pretty obscure to begin with (pretty much only fellow Mormons had access to them, and not many Mormons are into horror, so the series didn’t have a big following, even when the books were in print).

However, as I said, I was quite pleased with the fact that Zazzle recognized that these were copyrighted images and characters, and was quick to ask if I was in fact the owner of the copyright (which I am). I would hate to think that people could copy my art and sell it, because Zazzle was not doing their job and making sure that only the copyright owner sells their art.

My characters may not be as popular as Disney’s or StarWars, but that doesn’t make the copyright any less important. You wouldn’t steal from Disney would you? Than why do you think it’s okay to steal from others?

You can be fined $150,000 PER ITEM SOLD, and YES, if I found someone copying my art off Google and selling in on Zazzle (or any place else) I would contact Zazzle find out how many items they sold, multiply it by $150k and take them to court, because I have no tolerance for vile low life thieves. Sorry to sound harsh, but yes, if you are selling some one else’s art, YOU ARE A CRIMINAL and you BELONG IN PRISON with the rest of the murders, thieves, drug dealers, and thugs who think nothing of disobeying the law. Sorry, but that is a fact, and no amount of “but I found it on Google” is going to keep you out of jail once the copyright owner is contacted by Zazzle and told that you are stealing their art.

Play it safe – don’t steal from others and don’t use art that you have no permission to use. Believe me – you can not afford a lawsuit and the jail time is not worth the few pennies you’ll earn from it.

Waiting for Emmett to come.

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RE: Your Zazzle Store » Lucky, or unlucky?

Your Zazzle Store » Lucky, or unlucky?

savileislove		Posted: Tuesday, December 22, 2009 6:22:57 PM
Groups: Member Joined: 8/26/2009 Posts: 94		Are you guys lucky or unlucky on zazzle? Im feeling quite half and half because i get around 70-90 views A DAY, but never end up selling anything! Ive got 3 sales so far on zazzle, and im hoping for more. What do you consider yourself?
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I don’t see it as luck.

When I first joined in 2004, I had 15 products and no editing to my store front, and did zero marketing. I averaged $3 in sales per month for the first 3 years.

Than in 2007, Zazzle did a huge overhaul, and it became easy to create products (the old Zazzle was just hell to create a product.) By April I had 2000 products in my store, had begun a marketing program, and by Sept I was getting monthly checks for $25 – $30.

In April of 2007 I started creating Squidoo lenses for my Zazzle products. Each of my galleries has it’s own lens, and each of my paintings, has it’s own lens, and I made a series of how-to lenses for artists, each of those featuring my Zazzle products. All together I have created 507 Squidoo lenses, with nearly 200 of them being devoted to my artwork. After creating these Squidoo lenses, my Zazzle sales skyrocketed.

On my master gallery are links to each of my smaller galleries, so much of the traffic trickles to them from my master gallery. Each of my smaller galleries pays $25 – $75 about every other month to every 3 months.

Today, I have 8000+ products in my master gallery, plus several thousand more across 7 smaller galleries. I spend an average of 8 to 10 hours a week painting and drawing. Another 10 or 12 hours a week scanning art, uploading art, and than I spend4 or 5 hours per day 4 or 5 days per week creating new products. I average about 10 to 30 new products added to my gallery each week. And now my monthly checks from my master gallery are rarely less than $75, with a few being over $200 and sales continue to grow each month. My master gallery get 100+ visits on “slow” days and and over 1,000 visits on “busy” days. If my earnings continue to rise at the rate they are right now, I will be a “ProSeller” by Spring of 2010.

In short, there is no “luck” in my success on Zazzle. My first couple of years on Zazzle, I spent only a few hours a year on Zazzle and made only a few dollars. In my last 2 years on Zazzle I spend and average of 20 – 30 hours a week working on Zazzle, and now make a full time income here. So, no, not luck, but hard work. You get out of Zazzle exactly what you put into it.

Waiting for Emmett to come.

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Copper Cockeral
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RE to IM on FaceBook – more detailed info about what started the witch accusations and harasment

(ADDED NOTE: I’m a third generation LDS/Saint/Mormon; this answer went to a “new” fellow member who was asking what happened to inspire my previous post, this was my answer:)

I got 3 windows each with 50 tabs open, and speakers on my computer zoned out a while back, so I don’t get the “beep” from FB anymore and even though FB still says I’m online, but I already moved to a different site. It’s sort of hard to keep track of me online, I zip back and forth so much. I was on Zazzle, not FB, so I didn’t see the messages til just now. Sorry.

Nope, didn’t know about the AS group. I’m still sort of new to getting out of the house, it’s kind of hard to get used to doing. I pretty much only ever leave to go to the writer’s meetings (NaNoWriMo and Screnzy) and to buy cat food and grain.

The guy that was yelling at me is from the Sanford ward. (It was yesterday). He’s the same one that was accusing me of writing “deframitory” letters to tons of people in the Sanford Ward, though he’s yet to be able to prove that any of those letters actually exist. So I don’t know if there really are letters I supposedly wrote or if that’s just some rumor. He’s sort of weird. I’m used to him showing up every once in a while. Bishop LR got after him about it a while back, and he stopped, but Sanford just changed bishops, so, I don’t know, I guess he thinks he can try it again. Anyways my mom emails him, (I guess she emails every body, because I’ve had to change my email 34 times as a result of her emailing people who than email me in a rage over whatever it is she has said at that moment.) and that’s usually what sets him off.

My mom showed up at the yard today, with the same accusations – witchcraft, proof being my lack of shoes. I don’t where she comes up with this from, but I guess seeing how she’s saying the same stuff the next day, that she’s the one who got him saying it. (He’s got mental problems and tends to repeat whatever he hears some one else say, so I’m not too worried about him, because I know he’s just parroting some thing he heard some one else say. It’s the person he’s repeating that bothers me.) But yeah, seeing how my mom showed up with the exact same accusation, I guess she’s the one who said it to him to begin with. After he accused me of the letters in Sanford, my mom showed up a few hours later that same day accusing me of letters in Saco, so I’m not sure what to think there. I’d still like to see one of these letters, because last time letters like that showed up, well, the only time letters like that showed up, and I actually saw one, it turned out that it was written by one of my mom’s brothers, not me, like every one thought. It’s the only time a letter ever actually came forward though, so I don’t believe the poison pen letter accusations half the time, because it’s so rare that they can ever provide proof that the letters they accuse me of writing, are even real at all.

I guess, it’s always my mom that gets people all wound up, at least from what I’m finding out these past few months. I know from what Bishop K said that it was my mom complaining to him, because he was quoting stuff, word for word the way my mom says them – demon possession, spell casting, curses, me being a witch. I’m just so sick of it. It hurts when people call me a witch or say I’m demon possessed, but than I’ve got Autism so they think I don’t have any feelings to hurt. I just never can understand how folks can believe her. The whole believing that demons and witches are real, is just something I can’t get my mind around. It’s so illogical. I can not understand how my mom or her brothers or Bishop M or Bishop K can believe in those things.

Of course, I don’t understand how come every time a new Bishop or Stake Pres comes in, I have to be retried all over again. Double Jeopardy is illegal in the USA. The first time I got called in for “apostasy”, “witch craft”, “demon possession” and consideration for excommunication was when I was just 12 years old. That was Bishop Re and Stake Pres S. Bishop Re is the one who got released after having a mental breakdown. Stake Pres. S said there was no ground to excommunicate me than, because I was neither witch nor demon possessed nor apostate.

Than Bishop Ri called me in about 2 years later, said complaints of demon possession and witchcraft had been made again, but that he was no going to do anything about it, because he did not believe the complaint.

Bishop M replaced him, and at the same time Stake Pres E took over for S and it stated all over again. That time Bishop M brought in doctors from Pine Land Center, he claimed I was not only a demon possessed witch, but that I was schizophrenic as well. He tried several times to have me excommunicated between the ages of 14 through 17, each time he didn’t get any where with it.

Bishop B wanted to have all 264 of us (me and my relatives) excommunicated and is the one who told me “white trash like you and the rest of the Atwater clan don’t belong in this church”. That happened 13 years ago and was why I stopped going to the Cape Elizabeth Ward.

Cape E Ward broke off and became the Portland and Saco Wards instead, but by that time I had started going to the Sanford Ward.

That was when the vandalism started in. At first it was just rock throwing and stuff, but than the dead animals and photos of guns started showing up. In 2003 the drive by paint ball shootings started. They messed up my horse really bad, tore out half of her face and cut out both her eyes. It got so bad that the OOB police stationed a motorcycle cop to patrol Portland Ave. That’s when I stopped going to the Sanford Ward, because the police offices said they had evidence that it was people from church behind the vandalism. They had a list of suspects, all of them were from one of 5 different churches – 3 of the churches being the Saco, Portland, and Sanford LDS Wards. That’s when the reports and paparazzi got involved, one of the officers contacted the state police and one of them called ABC. We had reporters and photographers all over our land for about 3 months. That’s when my agoraphobia set it. Between the vandals killing my pets and the paint ballers and the reporters asking me questions and the police constantly warning us about who to avoid – I just freaked out big time. I couldn’t handle it.

Between 2001 and 2004 we had court dates on an almost weekly basis. I went to the early ones, but as the reporters and such got more involved, I stopped going to them. The later court dates from 2003 – 2005 I did not attend, except for one in summer of 2005, when I had a total meltdown in the court and the judge sent me to a psychiatrist. That’s when I found out I had Autism (Shizotypal Aspergers with OCD tendencies).

After the court stuff ended, my mom got something like $20K in the settlement, that’s when the vandalism went out of hand and our house got burned down.

Next thing we know, DHS is at the tent and telling us about an FBI investigation into OOB town manager, and that there were about 40 families on Portland Ave and Walnut Str that were involved, most every one of them had lost their homes, nearly all of them had been driven out of town, they couldn’t handle the stress. It was DHS that told us about Thomas and the other folks from the Saco Ward being investigated because some $3million had been embezzled out of town funds. That’s how I found out that the town manager and the town council were all members of the Saco Ward. OOB had to get rid of every one working in the town hall, and I had to deal with gov workers asking me questions left and right, only I didn’t know anything about all that stuff so finally they stopped coming over. I never did understand all that stuff with the DHS and the FBI and the town manager. No one ever gave us much information, they just wanted to know what we knew about it. In any case, finding that stuff out, freaked me out even more, because the guy they were investigating was a high priest in the Saco ward and the OOB town manager. They had records of how he’d been run out of 4 states already and he was constantly going from state to state to evade them. Finding that out, just scared the hell out of me and after that, I just stopped trusting every one.

I mean, you think you can trust a high priest right? You think you can trust your town manager right? But than the police and DHS tell us that these people we thought we could trust were the ones behind all the violence and death, and it just shatters your ability to trust any one after that. Now I don’t know who I can trust any more. But than, when all this was going on, normally I would have turned to the church for help, but I don’t any more because every time I do, the members and leaders start calling me a witch and telling me I’ve no right to be in church. I still don’t understand why people call me a witch.

I know several complaints happen because of the whole color thing. I see these glowing colors around people, which I thought every one saw. I didn’t realize until my late teens that other folks did not see them, or that it freaked people out when I talked about seeing them. But the whole me being a witch and casting spells and curses comes from that, because there were several times when I told people *that person* is about to die, and than within a few hours to a few days they did. People freaked out and said I made those people die, but what happened was, your color leaves and dissapers before your die, and if I see someone with no color, I know they’ll die soon. I was only 5 or 6 years old when I used to say those things, so the accusations of witchcraft and curses started early. That’s how the rumor got started at least. But that’s Autism, not witchcraft, so I don’t see how they can use that to call me a witch.

Than of course my encounter with whatever it is that Etiole is, is what started the accusations of me being demon possessed. I may not know what it is that Etiole is, but I do know what he is not, and he most certainly is not a demon. I assume you must know about Etiole, since it seems like every one does, but if not, I wrote all about him here: http://www.squidoo.com/amphibious-aliens so many folks kept asking me for more info about him, that I finally just wrote it down and now instead of reanswering everyone I just direct them to that link. It’s easier. And, again, though not many folks have ever seen Etiole, a few have, and they were not witches any more than I am, so I don’t see how my contact with him could make me a witch or demon possessed. Ben’s thoughts on the matter are that people who call Etiole a demon are silly, because (according to Ben) Etiole is an alien, some sort of Gray Hybrid or some such thing. (When Ben is not being a high priest, he spends his time being a ufologist.) I’m not sure what to think of Ben’s whole alien/alien abduction theory, but at least it makes more logical sense than the demon possession theory my mom’s always preaching. Personally, I’ve always thought of Etiole as a Faerie, which I say to mean a natural all be it rare, cryptiod creature, not some supernatural being or an extraterrestrial.

My mom’s constant accusations that first my Dodge and now my Volvo, are possessed by demons, baffles me. I have no explanation for her reasoning, other than I guess she is suggesting that Etiole somehow possesses them. I don’t know. I think the accusation that my cars have demons is the least logical and most confusing of any of the accusations to date.

A few years ago, in about 2005, I decided to look into this whole witch thing, to try to find out why folks kept saying I was a witch, but after talking to several wiccan-witches, they all told me the same thing – that there was no way in hell I was a witch because I was so much of a “super Christian Jesus freak”. Last spring some folks online said they thought I was more of an old fashioned Christian, the type like followed Jesus when he was still alive, and that today they are called ChristoPagans, which are neither witches nor what modern tradition calls Christian. I don’t know. I can’t figure any of it out. Christian call me a witch and witches call me a Jesus Freak, neither accept me as an equal. But still, after looking into the whole witch/wicca thing, I still can’t figure out why folks keep calling me a witch, and neither could any of the witches I talked to. They said the witch accusation was most likely based on my mode of dress. They thought it was most likely that folks look at my clothes and assume I’m a witch because of the things I wear.

But I don’t understand that either. You see, my grandmother was an Indian. She was a Kickapoo and lived much of her life in Hawaii. Because of her culture she wore muu-muu and kimono and long robes and stuff. She didn’t want her culture to die, like most native cultures had, but she couldn’t remember most of her native heritage, but her clothe connected her to her ancestors, it was the only part of her culture she had ever been taught (she was an orphan, in a time when Indians were still “red skin savages” so a lot of her culture history was lost.). As an adult she traveled around the world looking for information about her family history. That’s why she spent a lot of time in Hawiaii and Japan. I spent most of my childhood with her, because my mom was always in the hospital, and so, I grew up wearing muu-muus and kimono and robes and stuff, because that’s the way our native culture dressed. When she died in 1994, I inherited everything, including her collection of antique Hawaiian muu-muus and Japanese Kimono, which is what I have worn ever since I inherited them. The way I dress has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with my Native American culture, so I don’t understand why people look at the way I dress and call me a witch because of my cloths.

So, I mean, I can see where they are basing the witch accusations from (the Autism, Etiole, and my clothes), but I just can’t understand how they can actually believe such nonsense as to think I am a witch, because none of those things makes me a witch on their own, and even all three together can’t classify me as a witch either.

Bishop K did a lot of complaining about my cloths the day he called me to his office. I tried to explain about my grandmother, but my ability to speak coherently is not good. I’ve always had trouble making words come out of my mouth properly and that’s why I write things down instead. He kept saying I was a witch and putting spells on church members, and than he’d comment about my cloths.

The witch accusation upset me. I’ve gone through this every time a new bishop comes in. I don’t know who it is that runs to every bishop complaining about me and calling me a witch, but this has happened with 16 bishops and 3 stake presidents now. Every time I get told I’m a demon possessed witch casting spells and curses. Every time it’s eventually found out the accusations are false. Every time the monthly, sometimes weekly meetings with the bishop and stake pres drag on for 6 or 7 months. Double Jeopardy is illegal in the USA. You can’t retry some one for a crime they were already tried for and proven innocent. And yet, here we go again, with bishop number 16 and stake pres number 3. That’s double jeopardy 16 times! Why? I’ve already been dragged before 15 different counsels, each time with the same accusation of apostasy and witchcraft and excommunication threats. Sixteen times since I was 12 years old! Each time has 6 or 7 meetings. WHY? Why do I have to go through this every time a new bishop or a new stake pres comes into the ward?

Do you have any idea how stressful this is? And people keep asking me why I don’t come back to church? Why should I? What incentive is there for me to attend meetings at church, when I won’t get the chance to attend half of meetings because I’m too busy being called into the bishop’s office where I get accused of being a witch? Most of the meetings took place on Sunday, they’s take me right out of Primary or Young Woman’s classes. I missed more than half of my Sunday meetings because I had to sit in the bishop’s office every Sunday being told I was some evil apostate witch. How can they expect me to want to go to church when I’m not allowed to attend the meetings when I do come in?

I used to go to whatever ward Ben was attending, but I’ve been with him since I was 12, (he’s 30 years older than me) which in the Cape Elez Ward no one cared much about that, a few folks complained, but not many and no one did anything about it. In the Sanford Ward though, one of the members was a DHS social worker, and some how she found out about how old I was when I started going out with Ben, and even though I was 27 by the time she found out about it, she raised hell for him, she wanted him to be put in prison and tried to get me to press charges against him, she really went overboard about it and he got into a lot of trouble and he almost got excommunicated over it, and now he’s terrified to be seen in church with me.

I don’t know why she flipped out like that, because I was 27 years old at the time, yeah I was 12, but well, if she had ever read the church handbook, the church puts 12 years old as the legal marriage age, so, whatever. Anyways, Ben is just terrified out of his mind over the whole ordeal and that’s why he called off the wedding a few weeks before the wedding date. (He has huge phobia problems, and the DHS threats made them worse.) A lot of folks in the Sanford Ward threatened to never speak to him again if we got married, so now he hides the fact that we are together. We were supposed to get married in the temple, but they would not allow it. They took Ben’s temple recommend away and said I was not allowed to have on on grounds of “mental incompetency”. Some folks called me a “grave digger” and others called me a “gold digger” and others said I was with Ben because I wanted to be “a lovely young widow”. Uhm . . . at the time Ben had A LOT of money. His dad is one of the wealthiest men in Kennebunk Port. I did not know all of that at the time though, because I had never meet Ben’s dad and Ben had never once in those first 15 years ever mentioned his job or money. I had no idea he had all that money, not until folks in the Sanford Ward started saying those things to me. Their words hurt me more than anything else ever could. Of course, since than, Ben has lost all that money, and well, I proved them wrong because all these years later, I’m still with him.

But that’s why I stopped going to the Sanford Ward. The whole freak out over the 30 year age difference was a really big issue for people there, though I still don’t understand why. That happened 7 years ago and I had hoped that they had calmed down some about our huge age difference. I went back to Sanford once this last summer, and well, let’s just say I was most diffenatly not welcomed there. I was there all of 10 minutes before Ben had to rush me out of the building and we left. Ben didn’t dare go back to church for a few weeks after that, so I haven’t tried going back to Sanford since. It’s really upsetting that people can hate me like that, just because I’m 30 years younger than Ben. It’s the one thing of all of everything, that has bothered me more than anything else. I want so desperately to attend church with Ben again, but I’m not allowed to, people just go nuts when they see us together. That upsets me more than the witch accusations from the Cape Elizabeth and Saco Wards do.

So, I just don’t go to church at all any more, as you can see, for a lot of reasons. The witch and demon accusations I could ignore. I sort of grew up with them, and while they hurt my feelings and stress me out, I’ve sort of gotten used to them. I try to ignore them. It’s the accusations involving me and Ben and our age difference, that upsets me most of all. I find it very hard to ignore these, because they effect our relationship. They stress Ben and, he just does not deal with stress well at all. He freaks out and goes into hiding and doesn’t dare to contact anyone, not even me – uhm, yeah, he has all sorts of alien abduction fears and stuff, and rambles on ufo stuff all the time, and whenever any one freaks him out, he just goes super paranoid, and the whole deal with folks freaking out over our age difference sort of freaked him out worse than most other stuff does, and seeing him get all upset over it, made me even more upset than I already was over it. So all in all, that hurts my feelings and upsets me more than the witch accusations do. And, well, if they are not going to let me attend church with Ben anymore, and over such a stupid reason just because he’s 30 years older than me, than really, I’ve lost all desire to go to church at all now, because I have a hard time seeing how Jesus would think well of a church that breaks up families, the way folks there are trying to break up me and Ben. Me an Ben have been together for 22 years. We meet in church. Church was such a big thing for us. We attending every meeting – the morning meetings the evening meetings (the church stopped doing the double meetings in the mid 1980’s) and all the week day meetings. We used to come do the landscaping, and cleaning the building, and repairing the roof, and decorating for youth dances, etc. For years we spent an average of 12 to 15 hours a week in church. That was in Cape Elizabeth, before they consolidated the Cape Elizabeth and Portland Wards.

The Cape Elizabeth Ward does not exist any more, it got folded into the Portland Ward in about 1995-ish, the same time the Cornish Ward broke off of it. Most of the folks I knew ended up in the Cornish Ward. Than Saco Broke off of Portland a few years later. I don’t know any body in the Portland and Saco Wards today, it’s all new folks now. And that’s what really gets me – I mean, how do people there even know who I am? I asked Johnny that, and he said it’s because me mom is constantly talking about me. According to Johnny, my mom is “obsessed with you” he said. He added “you should hear her at Wayne’s house, she talks about you all day long”. I asked Ben, if he knew anything about that, because, I rarely ever see my mom – like months and months and months go by, between seeing her. Ben told me that she emails him almost daily, and than he forwarded her emails to me – I was stunned! Every one of them was her talking about me and how “evil” I was. She used the words “evil” and “nasty” over and over again to describe me and spent a lot of time talking about my Twighlight Manor books. I found that fact interesting, considering she has yet to read one of my TM books and half the stuff she said I had written in them was not true. Oh well.

I’ve since found out that she has been emailing copies of these same emails to several of my uncles and, some one named “Corbet”, Johnny said that that is some woman from church. Don’t know, never heard of her, so I don’t know why my mom would be saying all that stuff to her. (I found out, because when Ben forwarded the emails to me, all the email addresses my mom had sent the email too was in the box). I don’t know. I just don’t understand it.

I just realized how long this got. Uhm. Yeah, I guess I’ve been writing for the last 2 hours. Whoops. Sorry about that. I guess I should go before I end up writing a whole book here. =P

Well, that’s weird. I just noticed that FB pulled up the link to my Squidoo lens. Didn’t know it did that. Well, there’s a picture of Etiole there. LOL! I spend most of my time on Squidoo and Zazzle and Zanga so I so rarely use IMs, emails, or messages, I’m not too sure how they work I’m afraid. I guess it pulled up the link, like on the status box, because I typed it a ways back. Whatever.

Waiting for Emmett to come.

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Tired of people who don’t care. :( Tired of the harsement. :(

More harassment from local church members again today. The weather is at -10F right now. It snowed yesterday. And as I have done for the past 4 years, I was out shoveling the snow while wearing sandals and no socks and a summer cotton dress under a silk kimono. These are the only pair of shoes I have. I have no socks. This is one of only 2 dresses I have. I do not have any thing else to wear. Thanks to local fire bug church members who set fire to my home in October 2006, claiming that I was a witch, possessed by a demon, and casting spells to put curses on them. The fire was, they claimed, an attempt to preform an exorcism. And these are the same people who call me crazy. I’m not the one who believes in demons. I’m not the one who believes in spells and curses. I’m not the one who believes that witches are real. Yep. If I’m crazy what are you?

Anyways, I was out shoveling the snow, when a local church member drives up, gets out of his car, and starts giving me hell, screaming and yelling and carrying on, like I don’t know what. His problem? He was angry because I was almost barefoot out in the snow. He says the fact that I’m wearing summer cloths out in this weather is proof of my being a witch. He says that only witches could stand out there barefoot in the snow like that. He said and I quote: “You should be ashamed of yourself. It’s just ridiculous to dress like that in this weather.”

???

This is a man who is fully aware of the fact that the shoes I wear are the only shoes I have because they are the pair of shoes I was wearing during the fire all those years ago and thus they only pair of shoes I have, thus the reason I am forced to go sockless and wear sandals in this kind of weather. I have nothing warmer to put on my feet. I would wear something warmer if I had something warmer to wear, but fact of the matter is, I have nothing warmer to wear.

This man is also fully aware of the fact that the cloths I am wearing are likewise the only ones which survived the fire. Thus the reason I can not wear anything warmer. You think I like being outside shoveling snow in -10F weather dressed like this? I don’t. I would love to have something warmer to wear.

I don’t like having some one give me hell up one side and down the other like that. If he doesn’t like what I’m wearing, or lack of what I “should” be wearing, than why doesn’t he do something about it? If he REALLY cared he could give me a pair of boots so I didn’t have to wear sandals in the snow. Nope. He doesn’t care though, otherwise he would not be saying that I am dressed like this on purpose or that my dressing like this is proof of my being a witch.

And that, for those who asked, is the reason I had this “sudden outburst” on FaceBook earlier today:

What’s on your mind?

EelKat Wendy C. Allen is seriously considering hiring a hitman to kill the Saco Ward bishop and every other jackass who thinks it is alright to call me a witch. I’m am so damn tired of those slanderous mouthed religion crazed bastards. I almost wish I was a witch like they keep saying I am so that I really could put curses on them like they keep saying I am doing.

16 minutes ago · Comment · Like

EelKat Wendy C. Allen 

I just can’t understand how these people can be so crazy that they actually believe there are such things as demons, witches, and curses. Nor can I understand why they persist in calling me demon possessed, witch, or how they can say every death and illness in the church is caused by me putting curses on them. What the hell is wrong with these nuts anyways?

13 minutes ago · 

EelKat Wendy C. Allen 

and why me? why do they have this obsessive fixation on me? I don’t get it. I have not been to that church in 13 years. Talk about obsessed. SHEESH. Why can’t they stop stalking me?

11 minutes ago · 

EelKat Wendy C. Allen 

I have Autism. I see colors around people and can tell what they are feeling, if and where they are hurt or sick and can tell they are going to die within a few hours of their death. So can’t every one else with Autism. Autism does not make me a witch.

7 minutes ago · 

EelKat Wendy C. Allen 

Me telling you that person is going to be dead in an hour, is NOT me putting a curse on someone. It’s me telling you that their color went out and if you don’t get them to a doctor NOW they will be dead in an hour. All people with Autism see colors around people like this. That’s what Autism is. Having Autism and thus knowing some one is about to die, is not witchcraft. And any one who thinks it is, has got their head up their ass.

3 minutes ago · Delete

EelKat Wendy C. Allen 

Of course, these accusations are coming from a Mormon bishop who owns a bar room, so yeah, it’s not like he’s actually living the gospel anyways, so, who is he to judge me?

2 minutes ago · Delete

EelKat Wendy C. Allen 

I don’t think very highly of a Mormon bishop who sells beer. What sort of example is he setting for the youth? It’s these sorts of things that stopped me from going to the LDS church. Hypocrites leading the church. How far the church leadership has fallen.

2 seconds ago · 

Waiting for Emmett to come.

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Repost: In Memory of Spot

New From The Pidgie Fund: “The Bemen Town Musicians” staring: Spot Utopia Junior Thunder-Puff watercolor painting by “Wendy C. Allen”

The Bemen Town Musicians-staring-Spot,Utopia,Junio by pidgiefund
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Top 10 Postage Views October 09, 2007

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Photography, Art, and Designs by Maine artist and photographer Wendy C Allen aka EelKat © 1978 – Present