Steampunk at 35?

So I am 35 years old, and some people ask me if I am ever going to stop with the whole subculture thing and just be normal.  Some days I wish I could.  I just dont see the world "normal" ; I am very steampunk, in the way I see history as it could have been, and can imagen a better future from that. Then I attempt to figure out from the point we are now, how to get to that better future, from the point of divergence. Yes, that is how my odd, creative, and eclectic brain works.  Even if I can never get the whole world to that better point, maybe, just maybe, I can get my little corner of the world closer to it...

As a teen and young twenty something year old, I dreamed of having a safe house where people could come to learn, have safe haven, and grow in the Lord. And I did started down that path, with a lovely 2-story Victorian house, but, alas, it was not to last.  I lost the house, but I gained a wonderful Husband out of the adventure!

While I no longer dream of a large safe house, I do try to make my dwelling a safe haven to all I know with open hospitality.  I host tea parties, coffee fellowships, prayer gatherings, and just fun meals for friends, family, and others.  My Subculture Ministry, Clockwork Cross Outreach, travels with me wherever I am now.  While this has been a long rocky road to get to this point, I am happy just being me!

Take joy in your own journey of discovery, and be willing to never stop looking outside of the box, for as Morticia Addams would say, "What is normal for the spider, is chaos for the fly!"

~ Michelle  

Dealing with Chronic Pain

Well, my old friend, the mystery illness paid me a visit again this week.   I am not totally sure if it is the quick onset of summer heat right on the heels of winter cold, the thunderstorms, or something else that caused this.  I know I have been pushing hard, with the Steampunk Symposium a few weeks back, the missionary prep work we have been up to, and the continued work Clockwork Cross Outreach.    This is the first time in a very, very, long time that I have had any type of flare up of my chronic pain connected with my unknown, mystery immune dysregulation. 

Headaches, sometimes migraine leavel, wrist pain, joint pain in general, being able to feel every past injury hurting all at once, lack of energy, pain insomnia, heat rashes, and some others that come and go, those are what I face in a flare up.  Heat rashes and low grade pain are normal, but the rest and extreme pain are not. After nearly 19 years living with this, more than half my life, one would think I would be use to this.  But I am not.  I hate the not knowing this mystery illness creates.  It makes hunting for anything other than temp work very hard.

At least the Victorian era had a culture that allowed for illnesses, true they had a bunch of quack treatments, but we still do today, just not as many total quacks slip through.  When dealing with a mystery illness, that it took doctors 6 years to even give the "lupus like" immune dysregulation title, and more medicine that never helped, I have learned to take doctors with a grain of salt, and seek help where I can get it... from naproxen sodium, to green and herbal teas, and arnica.

If your like me, suffering chronic pain or mystery illnesses, hang in there.  I am praying for all of us.
If your not suffering, pray for us and be here for us, thanks!

~ Michelle

9 years of Steampunk...

I have been floating in the Steampunk world for about 9 years now, though I was more leaning to it even in my Gothic days.  My journey has been a long winding one beginning knowing only my beloved Jules Verne and HG Wells, and discovering Nikola Tesla along the way.  The path began in the heart of Chicago's uptown, snaked through the Desert Southwest, and today finds me deep in the woodlands of Kentucky.

Antiques, old Victorian sci-fi and fiction, gears and clockwork, bronze, brass, and copper.... What is it about steampunk that keeps me so in love with it?  For me it is the fact that Steampunk is a haven for my creative self, a refuge in the craziness of this world, a place to say what could have been, and from looking at those could have beens, seeing what might be in the future.  It is a place where my faith meets science fiction meets awesome friends, and we create magic together!

 I don't know what my future holds, whether it will be years in Kentucky or returning to the Desert Southwest.  I don't know how long my service will be aboard the Airship Caduceus, but I am honored to serve among my fellow Steampunks here in Kentucky.  I pray that Clockwork Cross Outreach continues to grow, and aid others along the way.  I am just honored to have found my people among both the Goths and Steampunk, and trust we together can make a big difference in this world.

~ Michelle

Bronchitis causing a Flare

I have pushed and pushed this winter, having first taken ill in December prior to Rob and my anniversary escape to Taos, NM.  After walking out in the bitter cold about Taos, my nearly recovered, I thought, cold turned into raging Bronchitis.  I made it through Christmas, struggling, and took the students to Winter Retreat at BABR, with fever raging.  I muddled through, barely getting anything out of it, except that they loved it, and it was good for them.  For me, sick as I was (even though the doctor had cleared me to go, saying I was "on the mend"), it was the lift of spirits I needed to keep going.


This has laid me low.  It has caused my "mystery illness" to rage full flare.  I have no energy.  I cant smell.  The cough just does not want to go away.  The doctor says, with my immune dysregulation, I was just a day or two away from a long hospital stay when I turned the corner.  The recovery will be long and slow.  I hate this.  I give it all to this work out here in the desert both with the Native youth and Clockwork Cross.  Now I am forced to care for me, nearly bedridden, for a bit until this health flare passes.  The lingering results, I am not sure how long till they pass.


If your like me, suffering chronic pain or mystery illnesses, hang in there.  I am praying for all of us.
If your not suffering, pray for us and be here for us, thanks!

~ Michelle

Steampunk Colors I

As I have been exploring this past year in the world of Steampunk, one thing that keeps coming up is all the colors that one has to work with within the world of Victorian culture.   Besides the many shades of metal, rust, and browns, there are many vibrant colors to mix into one's world.  Below is a sample listing of colors I have discovered, though there may be many more.
 
Browns

• Rockwood Brown 
• Fairfax Brown
• Rockwood Medium Brown
• Rockwood Dark Brown
• Copper
• Bronze
• Rust
• Terra Cotta
• Golden Oak
• Wingate
• Jorgenson Manor
• Earth
• Straw
• Vanilla
• Fawn
• Manilla
• Light Stone
• Biscuit 
• Leather
• Toffee
• Chocolette
• Taupe
• Jute Brown
• Butternut
• Harvester
• True Penny
• Tea
• Light Tea
• Turkish Coffee
• Brandywine 
• Chateau Brown
• Sepia
• Mummy Brown
• Van Dyke Brown
•  Umber 

Blacks/Grays

• Onyx
• Stone
• Pewter 
• Light Pewter
• Nightingale Gray
• Tricorn Black
• Mineral Deposit
• Foothills
• Request Gray
• Carbon Black
• Dark Sky
• Dovetail
• Steal
• Iron
• Cast Iron
• French Gray
• Light French Gray
• Silver Mist
• Intellectual Gray
• Gray Owl
• Dorian Gray
• Dunster House Gray
• Strawbridge Manor
• Preston Gray
• Falmouth Gray

Greens

• Rockwood Jade
• Green Grass
• Leaf Green
• Pine Green
• Evergreen
• Dawkins Green
• Brewster Green
• Rockwood Dark Green
• Drab
• Sage Green
• Chrome Green
• Hunt Club
• Shamrock Green
• Lucky Green
• Julep
• Billards Green
• Corner Pub
• Teal
• Envy
• Oz Green
• Green Olive
• Leapfrog
• Parakeet
• Peacock Green
• Rockwood Sash Green\

There are so many more colors, that I will have to come back and list more later, but that is what I have found in Browns, Blacks, Grays, and Greens thus far!  

Enjoy! 

Let me know if you have any thoughts, ideas or pictures of projects, I love to hear from everyone! 

  

~  Michelle 

I have a Mystery Illness

October of 1999, the fall I was 16, my prolonged summer illnesses showed no sign of going away, and I was starting to have a goiter in my thyroid. I was being bedridden nearly all of the time, and when I was somewhat ok?  I was at the doctor's office, trying to figure out what in the world was going on. Medicine after medicine, at first it was thought to be thyroid related, then it became clear it was something else, that was setting off my thyroid issues.  It would be 6 years before I got the diagnoses, "lupus like" immune dysregulation, aka a mystery illness, still unknown to the medical world.

 After more medicine than I could name, all of which were just making me worse, one wise doctor saw I was 90lbs at 5'11", and took me off all the medicines.  His advice?  Lots of green tea, herbal teas, broccoli, and melons to eat.  Caffeine, if I need it, to just keep me going.  For bad days take Aleve.

Thus it has been 4 years, slowly regain weight, and treating myself.  I rarely see a doctor now, save for annual physicals. What's the point?  They dont know anything about my issues.  Thankfully, I have only had small flares for a good long time now, except after being sick.  These have been a good few years, and I pray it holds on, as Rob and I prepare to head out to work with the Navajo in the next few years, and I seek what I am to do for ministry beyond helping Rob.  I know God will help me as I deal with all of this, and just help me keep going.

If your like me, suffering chronic pain or mystery illnesses, hang in there.  I am praying for all of us.
If your not suffering, pray for us and be here for us, thanks!

~ Michelle