Stephanie, my new tenant

Stephanie's very interesting. Her blog is a combination of a personal blog where she unwinds and unloads some of her problems in life as well as a link to her commercial site where she sells her line of scented items (incense, candles, bath & body products, soaps, and macrame hair wraps--whatever those are).

As you can see she's also lovely with red hair and fair skin. Not that this had any influence on my picking her as my tenant! LOL But it just so happens that I do have a weakness for the Irish appearance in the fairer sex.

Actually what I find most interesting about Stephanie is her battle with schizophrenia. I cowrote a book about the disease a few years back. While it was a book for older kids and not as detailed as a book oriented towards adults would be, I still learned a lot about the disease--or diseases would probably be more accurate.

Scizophrenia is a very difficult disease to live with and maintain a normal lifestyle. I find Stephanie's struggle to be admirable. While her blog isn't very long right now--she just recently started portaling her blog over to Wordpad--it is quite revealing and honest. Her bio and list of 100 things about me can be heartwrenching at times. Here's a few random bits:

• I have a deep love for animals, and tend to foster a lot of homeless pets for local animal rescues. Currently I have 2 cats, 2 snakes, 6 sugar gliders, and a ferret.
• I met my current husband over the internet *smirk*. Back in 2000, we met on an internet discussion forum for webmasters (in the php section….awww…geek love is so sweet).
• I am a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic
• Women, be forewarned, you don’t want to mess with a psychotic schizophrenic with a jealous streak
• I have the world’s largest brown thumb - I breathe near a plant and it will die.
• I lived on the streets of New Orleans for 2 months, living with absolutely nothing
• I have held over 85 jobs in my lifetime (I’m 27 years old)
• I hate 9 out of 10 people I meet and 7 out of 10 people who I meet hate me
• I love making incense, candles, macrame, and any other “crafty” stuff like that. Making things is so cool
• I don’t do drugs and I don’t drink alcohol but I do smoke cigarettes like a chimney
• I don’t believe in Satan, but if he does exist, he is most likely my mother.
• My dream car is a 1977 Trans Am Special Edition, as seen in the Smokey and the Bandit Movies
• 91. I have decided that I don’t like making lists of 100 things.

So.... what do you say after that? If you're familiar with schizophrenia you'll notice that a few of those items are quite typical--what's unusual is that Stephanie is in a steady relationship with someone that she loves and loves her back and that she's working consistantly. The job is in her home, which as she explains in her blog is a very good thing. These are quite impressive accomplishments for someone with schizophrenia, making it even more impressive is that Stephanie has paranoid schizophrenia which makes accomplishments like those even harder. My hat is off to her.

As you can probably also notice, she's got a sharp sense of humor and communicates it well. I'm sure you'll like reading over her blog and if you like candles or incense...just follow the link on her blog to her commercial site. I'm sure she'll appreciate the visit:

We create our hand-dipped incense in our in-home creation studio. We have drying racks, fragrance jars, packaging materials, and much more! We soak the incense by completely submerging it in our special blends of essential and fragrance oils for a full 24 hours. Once the soaking process has been completed, we lay the incense out on drying racks (pictured to the right). Once there, we let them dry in an open airy room for 48-72 hours until they are mostly dry.