Monday, November 22, 2010

This Year's Christmas Project For Homeless Youth

Just a quick update: The Christmas project I will be doing this year for the homeless youth in Phoenix will be... (drum roll please)... stockings! I have been in communication with the director of the Tumbleweed Drop-In Center (a home in central Phoenix that's used as a kind of daytime homeless shelter and resource center for homeless youth) and he is very enthusiastic about the project. He has provided me with names and ages of young people who regularly use the drop-in house so that we can personalize the stockings (he emphasized that this really means a lot to these kids), and we will also be making some blank stockings for any other youth who come in. Staff at the drop-in center will have supplies on hand for last-minute personalization of any blank stockings in those cases.

I have at least one helper so far on this project. If you would like to be involved, please contact me! Also, we're obviously going to need donations. We will need stockings, of course, and also items such as toiletries (small sizes) and socks, and of course fun "stocking stuffer" items. I will provide a list, hopefully by tomorrow, of more of the specific things we'll need.

The shoe drive project is still being worked out, and I should have more info on that within the next couple of days.

My online booth, Rummage Rampage, has still not re-opened, but that is also something I plan to have happening within the next couple of days.

Please stay tuned!

Monday, November 15, 2010

I Was Gone - Now I'm Back!

I haven’t posted here in a while because – basically – my life came apart at the seams for a little over a month, to be honest. I’m still not sure it’s entirely holding together again. I thought a lot about whether I wanted to go into detail here in explaining what all has happened, but I decided against it. Suffice it to say that there was not just a single crisis, but one after the other after the other. To go over it all would be too long and involved, and it would probably get too personal with regard to at least one of my “stray” kids. So, I’m just going to let it go and pick right back up where I left off.

First, though, if anyone who was affected by my “disappearance” is reading, I do want to apologize. There were customers from my online booth who received packages late or whose shipments were messed up while I had someone else take over for me (I did finally get my booth put on “vacation hold” so that there would be no more sales while I was unavailable), and there were other customers who sent me e-mails that either went unanswered or were answered very late. I vanished from Twitter and Facebook, and even my family and friends did not hear from me for a while there. To everyone: I’m sorry. I wish I could explain, but I just hope you’ll understand that I can’t and that you know I’d never leave you all hanging on purpose. Things were just real, real bad.

I can talk about this, though – the latest crisis to hit: My fifteen-year-old son has been suffering from gradually-intensifying tremors and shaking, along with shortness of breath and a light-headed feeling, for about six weeks. This overlapped with all the other stuff that was going on, so it’s been a very difficult time. This “condition”, whatever it is, finally resulted in a full-on, nasty, horrifying seizure. Over the last month and a half he has been to several doctors and has been in three hospitals – the last one, after the seizure, was the most extended stay – and no one can tell us what’s wrong with him. He’s been referred to a neurologist for further testing, but for the time being we are just living on pins and needles.

Now, where does that leave me as far as my “freelance mom” activities? Well, it leaves me in a bit of a pickle. The next month or so is going to be very much filled with doctor appointments and such for both my son and myself (in the midst of all this I became ill as well, but we’re not gonna go there), so I have made the very difficult decision that I will not be doing my Christmas dinner/project again this year. It is just more than I can take on right now. However, I am talking to some different people about the possibility of someone taking it over for me, so it’s not as if it might not still happen. I am still working on my shoe drive, though, and also on a somewhat different Christmas project. (just not a dinner) that is more in line with what I can handle right now.

I haven’t re-opened Rummage Rampage (my online booth) just yet, but barring any further crises (cross all your fingers and knock on wood), I plan to do that some time this week. Also this week I will have more info ready to share about the shoe drive and Christmas. I have some people to meet with and talk to, particularly regarding the shoe drive, and then I will get things rolling and share it here.

That is all for now. Wish me luck. Please! :)