Wednesday, August 8, 2012

EST. 19XX

Ok, here goes... (if you're reading this and have no idea who MGK/EST is or what I mean by the movement, you'll be confused lol.)

So after a really amazing night finding out when MGK's Lace Up is being released in stores (October 9, 2012/Lace Up Day) and hearing that EST will be releasing a mixtape Monday, August 13, 2012 called EST4LIFE, something crazy started to happen. I wasn't directly involved in it, and maybe that doesn't give me the right to comment on it, but I will anyway. It appears that there are members of the EST family that have a problem with HOW LONG others have been a part of the movement. When I first saw someone tweet about people talking shit I didn't really pay attention to it. After three people that I follow felt like they had to defend themselves against the negative people/comments, I thought to write something about my feelings. As far as I know the idea behind EST, the MEANING of it is "Everyone Stands Together"... how, if that's our motto, are people going to talk smack about anyone that claims EST as their family? I haven't been a fan since Kells spit his first verse but does that make me LESS of a fan? Does that make it any less important that I hear truth in every single word that man says? Did my length of being a fan make my reaction to hearing See My Tears any less profound? (I cried like a baby because I felt like he was taking words from my mind and saying them). I love the idea of EST and I love having a group of people with a common goal, to support the hell out Kells and the guys AND each other. I loved the idea of belonging to a group of people that has struggled like I have. I feel like I could really make some good friends on this journey, I think that as much as K is on a journey we are too, and I was excited to connect with a ton of laced up people on Twitter and Facebook. I didn't always feel this way though. The reason I have just become vocal on Twitter and Facebook about my love for all things MGK & EST is that I thought I wasn't good enough to be part of the movement. I always considered myself part of EST but I didn't know if it was ok to love him as much as I do and be vocal about it due to the fact that I only became a fan just before SXSW last year. I thought I would be called out as a poser, I thought that I wouldn't be welcomed. Once I watched more Kellyvision episodes, listened to more of his music as it came out, kept feeling the way I felt when I heard his words, I knew that there was a reason I felt the way I did. I have only spoken to a few members of the EST family as of yet but I hope that I can find more laced up people in Chicago. I introduced my best friend to MGK's music and she loves it to. We both claim EST as our team. I might not be able to see every Ustream, but I sure do try. Wild Boy isn't the first song of his I heard, but I do like it. I might not have seen him every time he was here in Chicago, but I did see him the last time he was here and I RAGED HARD. I might not be able to eat, sleep and breathe the movement but it's in my HEART. I have been sick and in & out of the hospital for the past 4 years, this movement helped me feel like there was hope. It gave me something to believe in and showed me that there are tons of others out there bound by a common love for a regular kid like us. I don't think the amount of time you've been a fan of MGK and EST is the point. I don't think that shows people how LACED you are. I think how you represent the team shows how laced you are. I think how MUCH you love Kells, the guys, the music and the movement show how laced you are. I LOVE THIS FAMILY! I may not be in high school, or even college age anymore, I am an adult with a great love for an artist, his music and his team. I don't know Machine Gun Kelly, Kells, K... But I feel like I would really like to chill with him if I had the chance. If I met him I would tell him how much he has helped me get through some really tough shit. I'm not "in love" with him the way a teeny bopper loves Bieber. I love him in the way that a person loves a poet or author. His words speak to my heart and I think that's the whole point. If you consider yourself part of EST, I consider you family and that's my bottom line. I don't ask people how long they've been a fan, I don't care.

Lace Up! 

xoxo
HG www.twitter.com/purpleturtles33

Thursday, June 28, 2012

It could be anything...

I only slept for about an hour total last night so this post might be really scattered and all over the place. I have been trying to get back to sleeping normally but it hasn't worked as of yet. I may be delirious right now... Just got a facebook chat message from someone I went to high school with and this dude is talking crazy. I don't know if this is real or if I'm being punk'd. What. The. Fuck?! The stuff he's telling me isn't actually funny, but I can't stop laughing. Lord have mercy, please. Why is this happening right at the moment I decide to type whatever happens for the next 30 minutes??? This is so weird! Ok, so I am just going to ignore that for right now, maybe hide myself on FB so I can focus a bit. Ahahahaha! @mobangmedia says "How u a BO$$ bitch and you can't balance a checkbook!" (RT'd by @johnnymarkjacob) THAT is hilarious and a VERY good question! If anyone has an answer I would love to know what it is in my comments! 
Today I went for a mani-pedi with my wonderful sister @LSayles9 and we had a great time! She actually bought a bottle of champagne from the liquor store she used the ATM in and brought it back to the nail salon. She's a trip, my sister! A lady that was getting her toes done asked what the occasion was for the champy and I said "It's Friday!". Friday it is and I am itching to get into a little bit of trouble I think. Not like trouble, trouble but I think I might want to go out tonight and have some fun. Or maybe I want to go play mini-golf. I just saw a tweet about the Justin Bieber Boyfriend Remix (by @Cityhall03). I marked it as a favorite for two reasons, 1) because I liked what he said, 2) I am going to do an entire post about JBiebs and his remix and I want to remember it. I don't want to forget what he said cause it was pretty funny. If you want to see what he said follow him and look, it was funny and totally true. The Biebs trips me out, for real. I was a boyband head back in the day so I totally get the whole screaming teenage girl thing. But he's like a fuckin' eclipse, you can't look right at him for too long or you'll go blind. He's an enigma. Or whatever. 


This post was saved as a draft and I just decided to post it now cuz it made me laugh haha.


xoxo
HSG

Friday, May 25, 2012

Friday

9:31 p.m.

I didn't sleep last night so I am totally wired right now. I'm not sure what the point of this particular post is yet, I might know by the end. Ha. I went to get mani-pedis with my sister today, we had so much fun! She had me crackin' up and it was really nice to hang out with her just the two of us. I get interrupted every 5 minutes I swear. If I could slap people via Twitter I would do it all the fuck day long! Seriously, there are so many people that I want to beat in the face it's not even healthy. I bet there's a bunch of people that would wonder if it was them if I publicly stated this fact. My answer to that is "Yes, it is you I am talking about." hahahahaha. That's me laughing at myself, I do that so I don't feel like an asshole. Which happens to be quite often. Son of a bitch! This is never going to turn into anything productive because things keep happening and I get distracted and then come back to it 20 minutes later. Peace for now.

xo HG
10:32 p.m.

Thursday, May 10, 2012

World Lupus Day... Celebrate???

Today is May 10, 2012 World Lupus Day. I wish I could celebrate, I wish it was a day that meant good things instead of painful things. Eventually, this day will be a real celebration but until then I am afraid to even get excited about feeling a little bit better. Most of the time there are small reminders that Lupus is looming right around the corner, always. Then there are some days where it feels as if Lupus never even existed in my world. It feels as if I've gone back to the years before I got so terribly sick, before the days I couldn't even get out of bed, before the days when "I'm sorry I can't, I'm not feeling well" became a disappointing part of my conversations with almost everyone. There are days when I can walk around the neighborhood with my 5 year-old son and he gets tired before I do. There are nights that to be honest with you I barely remember because I was out with my husband doing the things that normal young couples do! But it seems like for every one day that I get to forget about having Lupus, I am charged with 2 or 3 days of being painfully reminded with every breath I take. Medication, ice packs, eye pillows, teas, pain patches, the T.E.N.S. unit and more are all things that I have in my "bag of tricks" to use during a hard "lupus day". That's what I say when I feel like lupus is just kicking my ass to any degree. Take the rainy week we had a few weeks ago. I was not expecting to be hit so hard when the barometric pressure changed as I have been doing slightly better than normal lupus-wise the last few months. But even as the barometer just began to move I could feel it in my bones. I woke up the next day and literally couldn't move. Lupus-1 Heather-0. It was terrible. I had been at a wedding the night before so I thought maybe I was just a little stiff from dancing in 5 inch heels. The next day when the weather proceeded to suck and so did my state of being, I knew that the dancing and the heels had little to deal with what was happening to me. I began collecting my lupus combating arsenal, that I mentioned above, and settled myself on the couch for however long it would take for the inflammation, joint pain and fatigue to leave me the hell alone. It took 5 days. I am not in any way exaggerating, I woke up on Thursday and didn't feel like my whole body was going to fall off and knew that lupus had loosened her grip on me. At least for the time being. Lupus-5 Heather-1.


In October 2011 I started infusions of the new Lupus medication Benlysta. After every infusion I feel a little bit more like my old self. Like I can maybe do things that I used to do! I say maybe because I used to be super athletic and played sports. I'm totally out of shape now so a few other things would have to happen before I could definitively say that I can do everything I used to do. Really the bottom line is that I can do MORE than I could before October, I have less joint pain, I can sleep and I don't need to take as much pain medicine. I think that's why I was so surprised by the full scale attack I received from my immune system a few weeks ago. I had been doing really well, well enough to be able to publicly talk about it and not thing I'm jinxing my progress or the drug's effectiveness. I feel that I need to talk about it and talk about it a lot because I have been hearing atrocious things about this medication and it is all from people that heard from someone who heard about someone. Listen, I'm on it and I know what's up. This is the score here Benlysta-8 Lupus-1. I give Lupus one point because she's a sneaky bitch and jumped me a couple weeks ago like I told you. I have spoken to a few different people and I get angry when I do because they are just not being properly educated about this medication that by all intents and purposes is working for me. Doctors need to do a better job of making this drug available and that means they need to learn more about it. I'm lucky b/c my rheumatologist is brilliant, some people don't have that. If you are reading this and you have Lupus I encourage you to talk to your doctor about Benlysta as soon as possible. Don't let anyone tell you anything about it unless they are on it, because if they aren't on it they don't know. If you have questions, ask me. If someone you talk to has questions or wants to argue about it tell them to come talk to me. I love a challenge.


One day we will be able to celebrate World Lupus Day in the real sense on the word. But for right now, let's celebrate by educating as many people as we can. We need to make this illness as well known and talked about as AIDS and Breast Cancer and until we do we won't have enough support or enough money to do what needs to be done to find a cure. At least that's how I feel. I am doing whatever I can to raise Lupus awareness, and I am trying to encourage my friends, family and followers on Twitter to do the same. We just have to keep talking about it, writing about it, singing about it. Keep it in the news, in books, on TV shows and put it in movies. Make it so that there's no way our world can ignore it! I am making a film called "What Do You Know About Lupus?" and I hope that will help in some way to get the word out. But until I can say that I have conquered Lupus, that I've kicked her ass instead of her kicking mine... I won't feel right celebrating. It almost feels like a challenge to Lupus and I don't want that kind of Karma. I'll celebrate when the score card shows we beat Lupus once and for all.


Faith, Hope & Love,
HG
(@PurpleTurtles33 on Twitter)

Monday, August 1, 2011

What I really want...

As I look around me it seems that everyone is pregnant but me. I am really happy for the girls I know that are about to know the wonderful joy of motherhood and their digs (significant others) that will soon be fathers. I have a beautiful son and I feel that my life didn't really start until the moment he began to grow inside me. However, I know that I am meant to have more children. My son needs to have siblings and my husband needs the family that I promised him, they both deserve it. The problem is that because of my health issues and the medicine I take it isn't ideal for me to get pregnant right now. I know that I should concentrate on my health but I really want to have another child. It's always been a part of me, that I would have a lot of children. At this point it might not be a lot but at least it could be two or three? I would really like to have our second child by the time Hunter is 6 but it's getting closer and closer to his 5th birthday and my healthbisn't really improving. It's breaking my heart and I can tell it's starting to weigh heavily on my husband. When we started dating we talked at length about the kind of family we wanted and I feel like a failure because I am unable to give that to him right now and I don't know if I ever will be. What if my health never improves? I don't want to have a negative outlook but, what if it stays like this forever? We have talked about adopting but I know my husband wants one more biological child before we adopt. My plan is to have one more baby in the next year and a half. Then 3-4 years from the time that baby is born we will adopt another child out of Foster Care. I really like my plan. I just need to get my health crap out of the way, ugh. Some people have told me that I am selfish and that I should be grateful for what I have. I am grateful, but I know that I have more love inside me than I can give to just one child. I know that I am meant to be the mother of more than one child, that's the only way I can explain it. I'm not sure if anyone would understand unless they were in my shoes.


xo HG

Thursday, July 28, 2011

#41

No, it's not the lyrics for the Dave Matthews Band song! I just got back in to my hospital room after my 41st SPINAL TAP!!! Woo Hoo! Yeah buddy! Ok, enough of that creepy celebration. I figured that something big like that should have some sort of crazy joy attached to it. I'm not saying that I'm excited about having had a needle stuck in my back 41 times in 31 months, b/c that would be insane. I'm just saying that I thought it was appropriate to make a big deal about having 41 spinal taps, ok?! Ugh! The doctor said I have to lay on my back for awhile, I'm pretty sure I'm going to try it for awhile and then call someone crying to come and get me! hahaha! I hope that the doctor doesn't change my meds before I decide to leave, that would sadden me greatly.

Yeah, so I have to go home so that I can activate my new American Express card and use it for my Vegas reservations. I found THE BEST deal at the Luxor $915.00 hotel and airfare for two people. Not $915 each, $915 for BOTH! I gotta get home and get right on that now!!! i bet I could get it cheaper if I waited a little bit longer! They are gonna start getting desperate to sell their empty rooms eventually. HOLLER! When trying to book a vacation, I know they say the best deals are with those sites like Kayak, Priceline and Travelocity but that's not always the case. I looked through the Luxor's website and the deal that I got was much cheaper. And I could get tickets to a show included if I wanted to for cheaper than face value. So, instead of just running to these bulk deal websites, try out the hotel websites first and see what they have, write a few hotel/flight combo rates down and then go to the other sites like Priceline and Kayak and compare what you've found. I bet you'll be surprised!

I am going to have to find some cheap clothes to wear in Vegas. I don't have anything Vegas worthy to take with me. We're going for 5 days and I am planning on leaving the room for 4 reasons... The bachelorette party, spa day, gambling/drinking. the wedding/after party and that's it! I might come down to go swimming, but I'm not sure it'll be the right time for that... Laidies you know what I mean by that. My husband and I haven't been on a vacation since we went to Florida with Patch and David, and Jennie met us there. That was so fun! I think Tom and I are going to get tattoos in Vegas. It's our "vacation thing" lol. It's cool, I think. I just don't know what to get. There are 4 that I want to get at this point. Maybe one day I'll draw them and take a picture and post them on here... lol. OK, so I'm going to go lay flat and call my nurse and ask her if she can tell the doctor that I want to go home! Woooooop.


xo. H.

"I'm not sure what you want me to say" He says...

Why is it that men think that they should say what we want them to say instead of the truth? Sometimes those two things are different, how he really feels or what he really thinks and what he may think "you want to hear". That means that if he were to tell you what he thinks you want to hear, he'd be lying. I'm totally not down with that. I don't know about you, but if it comes down to lying to me or telling me the truth, I want the damn truth! For real. Anyway, every time this one girlfriend of mine tells me her husband has said to her "I don't know what you want me to say" again, I get really angry. I get angry because I'm tired of her having to be the bad guy. I can understand someone being intimidated by some body's strong personality or outgoing nature, maybe even loud voice. I just don't see how one can be so scared of some body's reaction to an original thought or comment that they NEVER  feel comfortable having or making them. I think it's sad. I also think that's it's not something this guy just developed while spending time with my friend, as a result of her behavior. I think this is something he has struggled with for years, since his childhood. I think during his most fragile years this guy got negative reactions to his opinions, thoughts or comments from the people he trusted. So, since then he has been bracing himself for negative reactions from everyone. I hesitate to get involved with these kind of things because they usually end up with some one needing therapy. Luckily I think everyone needs therapy and if it were me that's what I'd do. But it's not me, it's my girlfriend and I'm not sure she and her man are fans of therapy and talking it out. This turned out to be a lot shorter than I thought it would be, but I am getting tired and my eyes are closing on their own. Oh well. Goodnighty!


Peace. H