Yes, there's a little blurb about me at the bottom of every page of this website. No, I don't NEED to put this page up, but I will anyway. I won't go into my history with games on this particular page, because I have pages devoted to that - so if that's what you're interested in, I would go there first. I'm also not going to give my whole life history. It's not that I am not okay sharing it, I just feel like the average person probably doesn't care. If you care enough to ask, I'm happy to talk about it, but be warned, it will probably include lots of horsey anecdotes and silly stories because beyond that was a not-very-happy childhood that I remember little of (thankfully), and a rather misspent youth. I have a long history of mental health issues, and it's only fairly recently that I've found the serenity and competent health care to help me get to a stable place where I can enjoy being who and what I am. I still have rough days, as I think we all do, but for the most part, I'm content being me and I enjoy my life.
With all that being said, at the time of this writing (Fall of 2023) I am 45, have a 24 year old son, am happily married, and have several pets. My pronouns are she/they - meaning I'm non Binary, but okay with both or either she or they. I live in the Midwest, and have for most of my life. I do have one sister who is almost ten years younger than me, but we still keep in contact fairly regularly. My Dad is still around, but I don't get along with him all that well, and Mom passed away years ago.
This past September marked 15 years with my husband, who I met on World of Warcraft. We're completely different people, but at the same time we have enough in common that we seem to work out pretty well. Chiefly, we're both gamers. He's more of a social gamer, whereas I am usually a solo game player. Neither of us still play WoW, nor do we have any intention of going back to it anytime soon, but we've found several games that we have in common enough that we can still enjoy gaming together even after all these years.
Dogs or Cats? - Dogs. But that doesn't mean I don't like cats. I just don't like cleaning their litter boxes. 🙂 Currently we have a Beagle/Jack Russel mix named Castiel. (Cassie for short) We've had her for 7 years or so now, and she's a sweetie. Doesn't bark, doesn't howl... and is neurotic about any sort of rain. So we're her support humans.
Small animals - I started with small animals as a kid, and have had everything from guinea pigs to hamsters to rabbits to birds to gerbils to the fancy rats we now keep. Technically they're Bruj's, but I love them, too.
Fish - I love fish as pets. I can't afford them at the time being, but I've had many tanks of fish in my life. Angelfish are my favorites. They're as opinionated as I am. 🙂
Horses - Yeah, I was a horse girl. So much so I went to both an Equine science high school, as well as a college for horses. I had every intention of becoming an Olympic Level trainer/rider. I did, eventually, come to the conclusion that I cannot, either financially, or physically, support taking care of horses anymore, but I will include a blurry snapshot of the last horse I owned.
I have three tattoos... and if money grew on trees, I would have lots more. I love them. My first tattoo was a full color, forearm-covering tattoo of my favorite character from The Labyrinth movie, the Worm. In my mind, he stands for the power of friendship.. and how VERY important it is to listen fully to what someone else has to say before just walking off. My second tattoo was a plumbob (from the Sims, obviously) designed by my son. He has one on the opposite arm. It's half red and half green to stand for mental health and how important it is to remember that both good and bad days are necessary for our mental health. I also have a small puppy paw with a heart in it that we got for a charity fundraiser at our local tattoo shop.
Crafting - I've always been a crafty sort of person. I've done LOTS of kinds of crafting, including crochet, knitting, cross-stitch, embroidery, long-stitch, crewel, latch-hook, woodworking, painting, sketching... sewing?... I could go on but I think you get the idea. Will include a couple pictures of some of the knitted shawls I'm particularly proud of.
Coloring - Most of my artistic creativity has gone towards coloring lately, I just don't have time for much more. I have amassed quite a collection of coloring books, and love my brush tip markers.
Writing - this is actually where my name "IllusoryThrall" comes from. For more on this, check out my Writing page.
Reading - I've always been a voracious reader.. well, up until lately. I just haven't had time to. However, that doesn't change the fact that I'm a reader at heart. Here's my list of favorites and recommended books:
Non-Video Games - I am also a HUGE fan of board games. In fact, we have quite a collection, including some very expensive kickstarter and gamefound games. These include a board game rendition of the Skyrim world with miniatures, a Frostpunk board game (also with minis), an Elden Ring game we're still waiting for, and a board game based loosely on Elder Scrolls Online.
Colors - If you can't tell, they're purple, red, and green, specifically in jewel tones. I also really like rainbows in general, including what they stand for.
Foods - I'm a big fan of cheese. And Pasta. And Cheese and Pasta together. And in general, anything hubby cooks. We started Hello Fresh quite a while ago, and I taught him how to cook. He enjoys it so much he does 90% of the cooking in this house now, including the clean-up. Which I truly don't mind in any way shape or form.
Books - (see above)
Movies - My two favorite movies are The Labyrinth (the 80s cult classic with David Bowie) and a little-known movie entitled Life As A House. It's a superb film, but NOT for kids. Highly recommend a watch of it, but be wary of the adult themes.
Music - I LOVE music. MOST kinds of music, for that. My three fave bands are Eve 6, Barenaked Ladies, and Vertical Horizon. However, there's a whole lot that come very close to those, including Disturbed, Gin Blossoms... seriously, I could just keep going on. The only kinds of music I don't tend to listen to are Jazz, Classical, and Blues.. I just never acquired a taste for them. Maybe that'll change one day. I also don't listen to country much because hubby's not a fan, but when the music is in my headset... what he doesn't know won't hurt him. 🙂 Currently my obsession is Synth- and Retro-wave, in the name of two bands: The Midnight, and Gunship (among others). Also a huge fan of Roxette (and additionally, PG Roxette, Per Gessle's band after Marie passed on), Matchbox 20, Green Day, Savage Garden, Fever Ray, Aqua, and an obscure band called Black 47. I've been to a number of concerts in my life, although, recently, my social anxiety and physical health has gotten in the way of that a bit.
The final thing I will touch on in this extended bio is my mental and physical health. Keeping my mental health stable is the main reason I stream on Twitch, although the friends I have made are a lovely side benefit I never expected to get from it. I'm bi-polor, have ADHD, and social anxiety. I'm also cursed to have both chronic insomnia (and sleep apnea) and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. I also have a myriad of other physical issues, including Type 2 diabetes, a bad back, and Grave's disease (thankfully that's in remission). I try not to dwell on any of them, however, and currently I'm as mentally stable as I've ever been, which is super!
I just realized I haven't posted a thing on here about what's been going on. On December 1, I was diagnosed with both two large kidney stones.. and a tumor on my kidney. (Same kidney, no less).. So I had the kidney stones taken out surgically on December 11th, then had a healing period before they could go in after the tumor. March 13th (two days ago) I had robotic surgery to get the tumor out of there. Dr. says he got the whole thing out, so I should be home free. I will still not know whether it was actually malignant cancer until he gets the results back from pathology, which will be in a couple of weeks. I stayed overnight in the hospital after surgery, but I am back at home, and am doing pretty well. Pain is still higher than I'd like it to be, but that's how healing works. I will be back to filming my YouTube series by April 1st, and shouldn't have to miss too much there.. and as for streaming, at this time I'm planning to be back April 1st. But anyway - that's the main reason there haven't been any updates on here for a while.
However, What I really did want to mention, is that last week of "vacation" - I'm going to dedicate some time to updating ALL my challenge rule sets and the spreadsheets. So that should be finished before I start streaming again - I hope.
One last note: After much agonizing deliberation, I have pulled the forums down that were on this site. You can still easily contact me via comment or the "send me a message" page - and most of the people signing up for the forums were spam accounts. Which was a real hassle and headache. Finally, I just decided Discord is way easier to police and keep safe for everyone - so if you do want to chat about my challenges, there are channels for each of my challenges there. I apologize, but spending 4-5+ hours a week deleting spam member sign-ups just got old.. fast.
Updated Last: 2/10/2017
Before I do anything else, I figure I ought to introduce myself. I'm currently 39, and a married mother of one. I had 9 years as a single mother before finding the right dad and partner for my daughter, and I don't regret a minute of it. I tend to have a rather odd sense of humor, as anyone who knows me would attest to - probably rather vigorously. I come by it mostly honestly - my dad's family has a wacky brand of humor that is well-known and lamented throughout the family. The last major family reunion I attended, one of my cousins decided to set up a "talent show" that seemed to rather quickly devolve into silly blonde jokes - most of which were only laughed at by the "born" family members - not the in-laws. It's quickly become a family joke about the "Family humor" - at reunions, the family tends to gravitate together in usually-laughing groups, while in-laws congregate in another area. My mom's family humor was of a more dry, sarcastic bent.. so my sense of humor became rather warped between the two. 🙂
As I already mentioned, I have one daughter - who is now 17 years old, and I love her dearly. She's as silly and opinionated and geeky as me, and proud of it. She likes horses and pirates and vampires and gaming and reading and art.. much like me. She's into all sorts of things... Art is a really big part of her life, and something she plans to stick with. She's also very much a gamer like me and my hubby. Being a gaming-type family, we have Xbox360, Playstation4 (and 3 and 2.. and 1), PSP, PSPVita, Nintendo DS, GameCube - heck I even have an old Intellivision game console - that works (not plugged in tho) around here somewhere. So there's always plenty of games to choose from.
Let's see .. life history. As I mentioned on the home page for this blog, I spent a good portion of my youth writing - and had some rather extensive training into it. I at one point (ok, probably more like many points) wanted to be a writer for a life career - and that may still come about one day... but I always got pulled back towards my first love - horses. I started riding at the age of three and a half and rode on a mostly daily basis from then until the time I was 19.. (at which point, life choices sent me far from home into the wilds of attempting to grow up - and couldn't afford horses then.) I got back into them a few years later, buying a wonderful horse for myself, and a pony for my daughter (really, miniature horse, she was four .. hehe). I have since sold the horse - the prices to keep them simply skyrocketed in this area and I couldn't afford her anymore. There was also a secondary - probably more primary - issue of the fact that she was simply more horse than I was able to comfortably handle - and fear was becoming an issue. To allow us to become better partners, I needed to be able to put more money into some professional training/help for the two of us, and I simply couldn't afford it. I always planned to get another, calmer, horse, but it simply hasn't happened. Not long after selling her, I ended up meeting my husband, and I became far too busy with family life to even have the time to work with horses .. but eventually.. it would be nice to get back into them... I just don't see it happening any time soon.
Our current family pet is a Beagle/Terrier mix named Cassie that we got from a local no-kill shelter. We've had her since the middle of fall after our last dog, Balto, died from cancer. He's missed terribly, even though we have another cute pooch. Cassie is usually pretty chilled out, and very quiet.. but she loves dinner and playtime (although I think dinner holds the top position in her life). Also recently, our cat Missy crossed the rainbow bridge as well (also due to cancer, unfortunately).
Well, enough babbling. I may eventually think of more about me to post .. but this will do as an introduction. *chuckle* .. probably more than most people want to know already!
