I did it!

Yes, I was a big brave girl and I got my tattoo on Friday! It barely hurt, so if you’re considering getting a tattoo but you’re worried about the pain, don’t be! It’s uncomfortable, sure, but if you’ve got a good tattoo artist, they’ll know how to distract you. I was also allowed to have my Mom and sister to sit with me and make me laugh and keep me calm as I had it done. I absolutely love how it looks and so far it’s been pretty easy to take care of. In fact, I’m already planning my next one!

Fundraising is going well; this weekend I’ve managed to get over £50 in sponsors and I’m hoping for more in the coming weeks 🙂 training is going alright but I’m having a weekend off whilst I let my arm recover from being inked, tomorrow I have a blood test but after that I’m going to really immerse myself in the training and work on my distance ability. Speed doesn’t matter to me; it’s more a case of as long as I finish before they’ve all gone home, I’ll be happy!

You can  sponsor me at http://www.justgiving.com/madison-matthews , or my fiance at http://www.justgiving.com/dafydd-williams09 . Please do sponsor us, BCH are trying to get a new children’s cancer unit and by donating just a few quid, you could be helping to make one of the scariest times a child can experience that little bit brighter.

http://www.bch.org.uk/cancer_appeal.php – information on the Children’s Cancer Centre appeal.

 

Time to be a big brave girl…

Yes, I – who used to cry if a spider came within a metre of me – am getting my tattoo on Friday. I’m really excited, but really nervous too. I’m not too bad with pain, my pain threshold seems to be pretty high, and I know it’ll be worth it when I have my lovely tattoo, but I will admit that I am nervous because it’s the unknown. I don’t know what the pain is going to be like, or how intense it’ll be, or how long it’s likely to last (the actual tattooing won’t take long, apparently) and I think that’s the scary thing!

I’ll update with my experience and pictures of the tattoo on Friday evening if I get a chance 🙂 Wish me luck!

My next task!

Well, it seems that no sooner am I getting rid of one task (the drama practical, which went awesome [ i think! ] by the way!) am I taking on another. Loads of charities seem to have their own teachers, but I’ve never seen one to raise awareness or money for young carers. As a young carer myself, obviously it’s a major thing for me, but there could be anything up to 700,000 young carers in the UK, some as young as 5, caring for family members with physical and mental health problems. We get some help, but nowhere near the amount we need – and people remain woefully ignorant to what young carers face, and I think it is really important to try and raise more awareness about who we are, what we do and the fact that sometimes, we can’t be exactly the same as all the other people in our class at school, or our group of friends, because family commitments to other children means something incredibly different to us, and yet too often we are all lumped into the same group.

So, I want to design a t shirt. Chances are nothing will ever come of it, but I saw for myself how the power of social networking can change a community with the Harold Lowe memorial campaign I began on Facebook almost two years ago now, and wouldn’t it be wonderful to do something on a much larger scale – harnessing the power of social networking to help improve the lives of a huge group of young people, and opening the eyes of many, many more people to what young carers go through as well as the regular routines of attending school and growing up, so I thought I’d post about it on here, let you know my plan and see where it goes from there!

It is literally just something that popped into my mind tonight, and it’s going to need a lot of time, a lot of research, a lot of paper ending up in the recycling (environmentally friendly, hooray!) and a lot of ideas that will inevitably get shot down, but if I can achieve my eventual aim, to create a t-shirt to raise awareness of young carers in the UK, it’ll be all worth it, so watch this space! You guys will probably end up as my guinea pigs to show you my designs and ask for your opinions, so please be prepared to like posts and COMMENT on them! I welcome your comments on all my posts, by the way – I love hearing what you have to say, so please feel free to comment on any blog sharing your opinions, suggestions and maybe even, if you enjoy the blog, a little bit of praise (although don’t feel obliged!). If there are any topics you’d like me to cover in Moom’s Views, let me know in a comment and I’ll do a bit of research and post a Moom’s Views about it, and if there’s anything else – any burning questions, any advice you think I can give, or just about anything else, drop me a comment!