Let me introduce myself.

I have heard for many months from many places that I needed to start a blog in order to make any money with my online businesses. I rebelled against this. What do I have to say that any one wants to hear? In real life I am a very quiet person, a poor conversationalist so I don't do well in social settings cause I just don't have much to say. I have read alot of blogs of other crafters and things and I am constantly amazed. Some are very amusing because the author has this great sense of humor. Some are beautiful because the author has a great eye for picking out exceptional handcrafted work, some have a lot of advertising that tells me they have found a way to make a few cents. None of this is me. May be some day but not yet. But with alot of encouragement from my kids I have gone from learning to create a little Etsy shop for my jewelry 4 years ago to where I am now. I am on Etsy, once in a while Ebay, I have myspace, Facebook, flickr, twitter, it has been a long road learning how to do all this but I have learned and it is pretty amazing because before 2004 if I was on the computer, I was at my job typing dictation, billing, filling excel sheets, nothing else.

One of the things I have heard often and it sticks in my mind is: people like to know about the artist behind the work they purchase. Well that made me think, why can't I do a blog that is basically a diary that is open to the public? So that is where I have decided to start.

I am 53 years old living in Northeastern New York, I have 30 year old daughter and a 24 year old son. My daughter has a 13 year old girl and a 6 year old boy.
My daughter and I and her kids live together as I have been divorced for 23 years. Since I have been a single parent for almost all of my kids lives, I worked all the time, I worked 2 and sometimes 3 jobs at a time. I never minded, yea it was tough but my parents taught me to take care of my own and work for what I had, so I just always did it. I was sick a great deal with a lot of confusing illnesses but never paid much attention , usually put it down to exhaustion. In 2001 all my little illnesses got really worse and steadily out of control to the point where I was going from dr. to dr. to specialist back to dr. to another specialist. No one could find out what was wrong with me, had many different kinds of problems from constant colds and flu's to aches and pains to migraines to you name it. Around 2003 it got much worse. I was slurring my words, having trouble swallowing food, forgetting stupid things. I started falling for no apparent reason or I would be walking across the room thinking I was just fine but actually was not picking my feet up and my dragging toes where making me stumble. Then the migraines turned into a pain that I could not describe in the back of my head, the pain running down between my shoulder blades and down my arms, I would lose the feeling in my hands, I would wake up in the morning and my legs would not be there, I would go to get out of bed and fall right to the floor. Eventually, I woke up one morning and the pain in my back was so bad I could not get out of the bed, I called my dog (poor thing) she's a big girl, I grabbed her collar and hollered at her to get off my bed. How confused she must have been, me holloring for her to get off my bed yet hanging on to her.
Any way, once I got off the bed, I was unable to walk and kids to took me to the hospital, they admitted me thinking I had blown a disc in my back, did exams, cat scans, and found nothing wrong with me and sent me home 3 days later. So once again, I did the rounds with the dr.s and my chiropracter (who is my HERO) said I had to insist on a referal to a Neurologist because he thought I might have MS. Well I did just this, and after another battery of test including some MRI's of my brain and back he gave me a diagnosis of a very rare illness
called Chiari Malformation and Syringomelia. I am going to leave this here tonight and tomorrow I will explain this diagnosis.