Tap – Tap – Tap … Is this thing on?
Yep, it’s me. Still here and determined to get back to writing and chatting with you all …
I promised I would answer the questions you left in the comments of last week’s post, and I’m here to keep my word. :) You guys always come up with the best questions… some got me thinking pretty in depth and will be blog posts in and of themselves, but I thought I’d start out with a bunch of random ones today to get me in the writing mode again.
So, without further ado…
Have you always had handwriting like you do?
I’ve been weird about experimenting with my handwriting for a really long time. I can’t remember exactly how old I was, but it was around lower elementary age that I got a Crayola calligraphy marker set for Christmas from my Aunt Mary. It was at a gift exchange at my grandparents’ house and I’m sure one of my cousins had my name, but it was pretty clear Aunt Mary picked it out because of how excited she was to show me how to use it. They were normal looking markers with a calligraphy tip, and some had cuts in them so it would create the letters with separated lines.
I loved it.
After that I practiced my calligraphy letters obsessively, and through the years when I got bored I would purposefully change the look of my handwriting [especially if I was bored during school]. I would create a handwriting look and then write the alphabet over and over until it became a natural handwriting for me. Weird hobby, I know, but it was very beneficial later in life when I started scrapbooking. :)
Do you have any more fonts on the pea website? I have already used your handwriting in a few of my digital scrapbooks and I love them!
Ok, seriously – it is so much fun knowing that my handwriting is in your scrapbooks! Another blogger sent me a thank you note that had my Pea Frankie printing on it and it was so strange [and cool] to open an envelope and see it used.
To answer your question, no… I only have the two fonts right now. I might submit some more eventually, but there’s no guarantee that she’ll like them enough to make them. If I do submit some and they get made, you all will be the first to know!
Did you have a favorite book as a child?
Again, I don’t know what age I was but I would guess around 4th grade, when I found a book called Karen on a bookshelf in our house. I would pretty much read anything I could get my hands on, but this is the first book I distinctly remember not knowing what to do when I finished it because I wasn’t ready to let go of the characters yet. I can remember where I was in the house [back when we had really awful multi-colored shag carpet with oranges and greens and browns] when I asked mom if there was another book that told me about the rest of their story. I was so sad to learn there wasn’t.
It was a true story written by Karen’s mother, Marie Killilea. She told the story about her daughter being born and living with cerebral palsy around the 1950s in the most honest, real way. She talked about their struggles as a family, the challenges Karen faced and the process of their lives changing as she grew older.
It’s funny, because I read that book as a kid and forgot about it for years, but it actually helped me quite a bit when I was making the decision to go on disability. I was trying so hard to work or get freelance writing jobs, but was constantly getting sick and winding up in the hospital. I was trying to figure out what to do when my mind flashed on the end of that book. Karen had grown into a young adult and was trying to decide if she would keep struggling to use her crutches to walk, or start using a wheelchair. She had made a list outlining the positives of each… on the side marked crutches was a long list of reasons to keep pushing, and on the side marked wheelchair there was only one word: Freedom. The memory of that passage, more than anything else, made me feel like it was ok not to spend my entire existence fighting instead of living.
Amazing how something as simple as picking up a book that was lying around the house as a kid could help me make such a huge life decision.
Ok, peeps, that’s it for today.
I’m still running ridiculously slow here, but am going to try to put up some short question and answer posts more frequently … maybe if I get my writing brain working again the rest of my body will somehow follow suit and figure out how to work again, too. :) Not that I’m impatient or anything…
So here’s to seeing you all again soon. And keep your fingers crossed that I didn’t just jinx myself by saying that…
;)
