Crucianize

Author: Lynnette LaPlace

  • My New Phone

    My New Phone

    Hello, my lovelies!

    At long last, my new phone is finally here!!

    I think it was two weeks ago I ordered my phone and these past weeks were torture, I am not the most patient person and I really wanted to be able to talk to my family without cutting the conversation short to charge my phone. I would just sit and wait and wait for some kind of answer as to just when exactly I would receive my phone. Like a week after I ordered it, or rather my husband ordered it for me 😊 he told me I would get it the next week. The next week came and I was still phone less the date was changed to the next week!

    So the week it was supposed to be delivered we got the paper in the mailbox to pick it up at the post office hooray!! My husband went to the post office pretty much straight from work and they were closed! It was soul-crushing because I had been there earlier in the day with my son on a class trip. We’d have to get it the next day and finally on Saturday I got my Xiaomi Redmi Note 7 in my hands and it was beautiful.

    Neptune Blue

    I bought the 32GB model in Neptune Blue, first of all, let me just say that purple is my favorite color and as soon as I saw that purple I knew this was the phone I would go with. The phone is very responsive but you have to remember that my last phone was 5 years old so my new phone is probably not that fast but compared to the old one it was lightning to me. It charges fast and I don’t have to be attached to my charging cable just to make a phone call, I haven’t actually made a call with my phone yet, I just don’t have anyone who calls me other than my parents and they haven’t called yet so I can’t talk about the quality of a call.
    I really like the fingerprint scanner, my old phone Huawei P8 Lite 2015 didn’t have one so this is like fancy stuff for me, I also have my usual pattern code and tap to wake. I really like tap to wake when I’m doing something and get distracted for a bit and want to go back to doing what I was originally doing on my phone.

    Oh and my most favorite aspect! I found this gem when looking for a way to block a phone number, I get A LOT of calls from unknown numbers and they annoy the hell out of me so this is heaven-sent!

    Block private numbers? ✔ yes, please!
    Block unknown numbers? ✔ yes, please!

    I don’t know why this isn’t standard procedure, if you want to call me you should text me first so I can know who you are, I treasure my private life and my phone number is part of my private life.

     I haven’t really gotten to play with the camera too much, I’ve been sick and only to the school to drop my son and back, feels like I’ve been inside for a month, to be honest.

    This was the first photo I took with my phone, I didn’t know there would be a watermark until after I took the picture.

    If you want to remove the Watermark it’s as simple as going into your Camera Settings and finding the option that says Dual camera watermark. I’m looking forward to going out and finding things to take a picture of, I miss being excited to take out my phone or camera and hope that I can find that passion again.

    In case you were wondering, you can find the specs of my phone here at  GSMARENA.

    It really is a great phone and if you’re thinking of getting one for yourself it’s not too expensive at 199,99€. It’s a pretty sweet deal if you’re on a budget like myself if you’re looking for something with a little more storage I heard there was a 64 GB version but it’s not Globally available as yet.

    Alright, then my lovelies, time for me to discover even new features hidden in my phone!

    Until next time!

  • My thoughts on the dry shampoo from Super U

    Hey everyone!

    So today I finally gave my Dry Shampoo a chance to do its stuff.  I had my hair in twists all week and didn’t wash anything and over the weekend I was ill so no wash day still.  I decided to try out my Bamboo and White Grape Dry Shampoo from U that I recently picked up in Super U which I spoke about here. I’ll do a little review for you to see if it’s something you might think about adding to your wash day routine.

    This Dry Shampoo is for Tous types de cheveux which is French for All hair types. I didn’t want to pick up the others because I wasn’t sure how it would interact with my hair.  This one just settled the safest bet.

    So I’m just going to translate the most important parts of the instructions:

    Use on dry hair.  Shake well before use.  Keep the can at a vertical position of 15 cm from the hair and spray at the roots.  Leave it alone for 2 minutes before rubbing in the powder residue.

    When I first sprayed this it was a pretty strong scent but it quickly faded to a much more pleasing scent.  I could definitely feel the alcohol interacting with my scalp, not in a burning way but just to let me know that it was present. There was no white residue left behind after running it in.

    So far my scalp is tingly and smells wonderful but will it do anything for my hair?

    I guess tomorrow we’ll see. I’ll be sure to update this post with how my hair turned out after a night with the dry shampoo.

    As promised I’m updating this post to include what my hair looked like after using the dry shampoo.

    To be honest, I really shouldn’t have used the dry shampoo at this point in time because of the build-up of gel in my hair but it wasn’t too bad just not really effective at doing much of anything. My hair ended up pulled back in a puff after all.

    The most I can say is that you can’t see the build-up which somehow the dry shampoo masked a little?

    I promised myself that I was going to do a wash day on Wednesday when I don’t have anywhere to go and finally use this new product that I bought a few weeks ago. I’ll probably give you a little review of it later this week.

    Until next time!

  • How to handle being an Introvert and have the best day ever

    Hey everyone!

    I just want to talk about yesterday and why it was the best day ever.

    My husband has so many friends that from what I know of my childhood and my family it seems unnatural, we spend a lot of time with them and it wears me out both physically and mentally. Don’t get me wrong I like his friends BUT I need time to myself to unpack all the stress of the week and it seems like I can never get that time because I’m always home with Naveen or at his parents or friends and that’s like being bombarded with even more stress. The talking, the laughing, the music, the smells, everything beats at me until I’m in a deep dark pit crying. To make matters worse we stay at these stressful events for hours and hours and I’m just tired and want to go home but he’s not ready to go home and Naveen is not ready. So there I am month after month being abused mentally.

    Yesterday I decided to stay home by myself and it was wonderful!

    I had the house to myself, it was quiet, I didn’t have to concentrate on anything other than watching one of my favorite movies The Princess Bride. I could feel all the stress leaving my body and my mood lifting.

    If you have Social Anxiety and are also an Introvert like me never feel bad about staying home and watching your favorite movie, your mental health is way more important than being social because society dictates you must be, enjoy your time alone guilt-free, and don’t make it a one-time thing. When you feel yourself slipping engage in some self-care.

    I am ready for the week now and actually thinking about smiling but we’ll see what tomorrow brings huh!

    Until next time!

  • Dry Shampoo for Natural Hair

    Hey everyone!

    As you guys may or may not know I shaved off all my relaxed hair two years ago and let my natural hair grow in. Let me tell you it was quite an adventure.

    While I enjoy my hair in its natural state I wash my hair quite often and it’s getting expensive continuously buying Shampoo, Conditioner, Deep Conditioner, and Leave-in Conditioner. Hair oil can last me a few months so there’s no problem on that front.

    I keep seeing reviews of Dry Shampoo and some of them have not gotten very good reviews from other women of color. The one that did have good reviews was the DevaCurl No-Poo Original Zero Lather Conditioning Cream it’s not exactly a Dry Shampoo but it seems the Quick Cleanser is no longer available. This poses a problem for me because of 1. DevaCurl not shipping to France and 2. Buying it on the French Amazon is expensive as hell DevaCurl No-Poo-Cleanser. On the DevaCurl website, the cleanser is just $10, and Amazon.fr it is 38,00€ which is a $32.97 increase. I understand importing can be expensive but $32.97?!

    With DevaCurl out of the running I turned to Dry Shampoos that would be readily available in the stores around me, they include the likes of Batiste, Garnier Ultra Doux, and U by Super U.

    Yes, I live in a very small town and our offerings are very limited!

    I was not going to pick up any Batiste because of all the reviews I’ve seen where it does nothing but makes natural hair greasy and leaves a white residue. That left me with Garnier Ultra Doux and U by Super U, I’m well acquainted with the brands having used Shampoo, Conditioner, Leave-in Conditioner, and Deep conditioner from both the Ultra Doux line and U by Super U, I’ve also used hair oil, Micellaire water, and facial moisturizers by U.

    With this in mind, I think I will buy both the Garnier Ultra Doux Dry Shampoo and the U by Super U to test out which one I like better.

    What about you? Do you have a brand of Dry Shampoo that you like?

    Leave a comment to let me know!

    Until next time!

  • I love new books!

    As an aspiring author, there’s nothing I love more than new books, the smell alone can be addictive but the feeling of getting your hands on the next book in a series after waiting for months even years is explosive.

    Unfortunately for me, finding time to read these days are slim to none, not only do I have to go out several times to drop and pick up Naveen but I have to battle my depression to even feel like reading a book I not only was so excited to read but waited a long time to receive in the mail. I used to be able to read over 100 books in a year and I have fallen to a little under 50.

    I want to enjoy my favorite pastime again, I want to be able to fall into a book and forget everything around me, I want to live and love.

    Last month I finally got Vengeance Road (Torpedo Ink #2) by Christine Feehan.

    Go zero to sixty in this dangerously sexy novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Christine Feehan.

    Breezy Simmons was born into a ruthless motorcycle club—and now that she’s out, she’s never going to be that girl again. But when her past catches up with her, Breezy must go to Sea Haven to seek out the man who almost destroyed her. The man who chose his club over her and left her feeling used and alone.

    As vice president of Torpedo Ink, Steele is ride or die for the brothers he lived through hell with. He never thought he’d find something as pure as his feelings for Breezy, or that keeping her safe would mean driving her away with cruel words that turned her love for him to ash.

    Now, Steele won’t let her walk away twice. He’ll do whatever it takes to make Breezy his woman again—especially when he learns the real reason she came to him for help, and that the stakes are higher than he ever could have imagined…

    Synopsis from Goodreads available here: Vengeance Road (Torpedo Ink #2)

    I preordered this book back in January and had to wait quite a while since it was shipping from the US to France. Before devouring it I decided I was going to re-read Judgment Road first so that I can have the settings and characters fresh in my mind before continuing the series. Although I already read the book and thoroughly enjoyed it I am struggling to get through it. I really want to read the new book but I want to finish this book first!

    To make matters worse I picked up a new book and immediately started reading it. It’s called Land of Love and Drowning by Tiphanie Yanique.

    A critically acclaimed debut from an award-winning writer—an epic family saga set against the magic and the rhythms of the Virgin Islands.

    In the early 1900s, the Virgin Islands are transferred from Danish to American rule, and an important ship sinks into the Caribbean Sea. Orphaned by the shipwreck are two sisters and their half brother, now faced with an uncertain identity and future. Each of them is unusually beautiful, and each is in possession of a particular magic that will either sink or save them.

    Chronicling three generations of an island family from 1916 to the 1970s, Land of Love and Drowning is a novel of love and magic, set against the emergence of Saint Thomas into the modern world. Uniquely imagined, with echoes of Toni Morrison, Gabriel García Márquez, and the author’s own Caribbean family history, the story is told in a language and rhythm that evoke an entire world and way of life and love. Following the Bradshaw family through sixty years of fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, love affairs, curses, magical gifts, loyalties, births, deaths, and triumphs, Land of Love and Drowning is a gorgeous, vibrant debut by an exciting, prizewinning young writer.

    Synopsis from Goodreads available here: Land of Love and Drowning

    I have only read a few pages but I am enjoying it, I feel like I’m home with the use of Creole writing, I know some might struggle with it and pronouncing the words right but it’s my native tongue and it just rolls off my mind’s tongue. I feel a sense of peace in this foreign land.

    On another note, I was looking forward to receiving a new phone I just recently purchased but it got pushed back to next week. I had planned on getting acquainted with my new phone this weekend but I think I will use it to read and write.

    Until next time!

  • 23andme: My Changing Ancestry Composition

    I don’t know if I ever mentioned before that I took a DNA test with 23andMe on here but I took one back in June 2018. The main reason I took it was to discover who my father’s family was, my father was adopted when he was young, and while we knew the names of his parents I didn’t know anything else. My paternal grandfather passed away when I was 13 years old and in all that time I had never even met him, my two older sisters stayed over at his house but never me. I’m always told that I look like his side of the family so it was a pretty hard blow to never know him or about his family and wish that I had been given that chance. I have no pictures and very few stories to even remember him by so I took to genealogy to try to learn something.

    My grandfather was born in Gustavia, Saint-Barthélemy, Antilles françaises in 1920. He was the son of Vitalis LaPlace and Marie Josephine Turbé. My grandfather left his home to stay with an aunt in St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands where a lot of French people migrated to in the late 1800s. While my father was born in St. Thomas he grew up in St. Croix where I was born and I didn’t visit St. Thomas until I was well into my 20s thanks to one of my older sisters.

    One of my younger brothers did an Ancestry DNA test in I want to say 2017 but Ancestry doesn’t ship to France so I went with 23andMe. Looking at my brother’s results I had an idea of what my Ancestry  Composition could look like and I was excited waiting for my results.

    I got my results back on June 18, 2018:

    The African portion was pretty underwhelming and my French & German was pretty small for someone whose grandfather was a French man.  What I have since learned is that some of the British & Irish, Iberian, Italian, and Broadly categories were hiding a good portion of my French DNA and it was nearly impossible for 23andMe to separate it from the other areas of Europe because of migrations over the ages.

    Sometime around October 23andMe updated their African categories and I had a brand new Ancestry Composition to look at:

    My West African was broken down into Nigerian, Coastal West African, Senegambian &Guinean, Congolese, and Sudanese. My African Hunter-Gatherer category disappeared. My British & Irish went up, Italian went up, Iberian went down, and Scandinavian appeared. Western Asian & North African categories appeared. Everything else remained more or less the same.

    In December 23andMe once again updated their categories:

    The Coastal West African category was broken down into Ghanaian, Liberian, & Sierra Leonean. Iberian was changed to Spanish & Portuguese. Everything else remained the same.

    Yesterday 23andMe invited their V5 customers to try out a Beta Update to their composition:

    My Ancestry Composition went through a lot of changes!

    Central Asian & South Asian was added

    My African categories were all decreased with the exception of Congolese and Sudanese. I gained a new category as well, Southern East African. My European increased Spanish & Portuguese now being my highest category at 6.6% British & Irish decreased from 8.9% to 6.0% my French & Geerman went from 3.3% to 5.6% I completely lost the Italian I had which doesn’t worry me much since I never had any Italian paper trail. My Native American remains unchanged through all of these updates.

    It has been so fascinating watching all of these changes and I can’t wait to see what other changes happen later on.

    On the paper genealogy front, I had a really big breakthrough yesterday as well. I have a brick wall 3x great-grandmother Anne Louise Chapelain who I couldn’t find any information on her parents or siblings but yesterday I decided to go back over my work to see if I missed anything and while going through my 2x great-grandfather’s second marriage I found an uncle named Joseph Chaplain in the witness section. This Joseph Chaplain would have been 35 in 1888 so born around 1853 give or take, I think he might be a half brother because Anne Louise was born around 1835, that’s a good 18 years older and depending on her mother’s age might have been way after her childbearing age. I haven’t found anything on him so far but I have hope.

    Until Next time!

  • The reasons why February was a rough month for me

    February…

    Usually, I spend February celebrating my birthday and when I was back home in St. Croix going to the Agricultural & Food Fair, I have not found anything over here that can be an annual birthday event. I spend my birthday either taking my son to school or staying home with him and doing nothing. I wish there were things for us to do but if it requires us interacting with others I don’t find that a suitable birthday enjoyment. If I’m lucky I go to a movie with my husband but we haven’t done that in a while.

    This year was my 32nd birthday and honestly, I was numb during the whole thing. I didn’t get a video call from my family, I didn’t get to go out, and my son fractured his elbow two nights before and we spent all night and the next day going from hospital to the next to get his elbow attended to. I was wiped out and would have been fine to stay home and do nothing but we went to the movies and I did enjoy it even though it was in French and I understood less than half of what was going on.

    I want more out of my 32nd year but I am stuck in figuring out just what I want.

    I picked back up my crocheting and successfully completed some small projects while continuing to work on a scarf I decided to make.

    My scarf in progress:

    Snickers keeping me company while I work on my rows.

    I am almost finished with a little teddy bear I am making, it just needs to be stuffed and have the final touches done:

    Now for my completed works, I recently picked up a French Knitter, a French Knitter is also known as Spool Knitting, Corking, or Tomboy Knitting. It’s a form of knitting that uses a spool with a number of nails around the rim to produce a narrow tube of fabric, similar to i-cord. The spools usually have four or five nails mine had four bendy things lol, here’s a picture so you can see what I am referring to:

    If you look closely in the background you can see the frustratingly difficult instructions I was supposed to follow to create a mouse. I was close to pulling my hair out when I looked on Youtube for a video to help me understand those impossible-to-decipher depictions. I was successful in following along with the video and made my first mouse. It was supposed to be for Snickers but…

    It was way too cute! I also didn’t want her swallowing the eyes if she got too rough with the little thing. I decided to crochet her a mouse that she can be rough with and set out to find a good pattern.

    I made her this:

    It honestly looks more like a Rat than a mouse but meh she likes those kinds of critters. I made some embellishments on the pattern so my Rat is special lol. Hopefully, Snickers likes her Rat friend and I can move onto finishing my scarf and another project I started (Mesh Hat).

    Before I forget, Naveen only had to wear his cast for three weeks, initially, they said four weeks but his elbow healed really fast and well, and last week Friday he got it removed.

    Until next time!

  • Overcoming my anxiety one step at a time

    Good morning!

    This year in September will make four years since I moved to France and I still don’t have any friends, not really anyway. There’s nobody I feel relaxed enough to send a text message to or call and just sit around talk and laugh almost everyone I know over here is through my husband and your husband’s friends are not always your friends.

    There is one woman who I occasionally share a “Bonjour” with that has no ties to my husband but that’s basically the extent of my French in public, “Bonjour”… I managed a “ça va” today because she and her son were not at school since last week Thursday and I did miss them. I wish so much that I can articulate what I want to say but at that moment I don’t even know what to say. I am honestly content just to walk beside them on our way to school and from school because it’s the loneliest feeling walking your child to school knowing you have nobody.

    I’m trying to change that by taking one step at a time because a giant leap is likely to do some real damage to the progress I’ve made and let’s face it I’m a cautious person and I need to be comfortable talking to someone or it will never happen.

    Moving on to another subject, years back I had another blog that I only used once because I didn’t understand how to use it, I finally merged it to this one so you can see my old blog post here My Hiking Experience. I kind of wish that I had more hikes to post about but we rarely go anywhere anymore. I suppose I could go out to the park when it’s warmer and beg to visit the castle since we haven’t been there since last year. I swear I’m going to be a chatty Cathy until I go to the lake and other nature sites.

    If I do get my way and I probably will I’ll be sure to post pictures so you can enjoy the scenery with us.

    Until next time!

  • The Reasons for Rebranding my blog

    As you will no doubt notice I have changed the name of my blog to better reflect the stage in my life I’m in right now. There’s no longer a baby in there and there hasn’t been for a while so it was time to change it.

    Once Upon a Dovy was the hashtag I would have used if we had had a huge wedding with ceremony and invitations but life has a way of changing in a quickness so I’m using it here now since this is who I am now.

    I know many people make new years resolutions and whatnots, I have never seen a point in doing this, this year I think I will. I want to go into 2019 not feeling depressed every day, I want to be able to sit down and work on my crafts whether it’s writing, photography, or crochet. I want to be able to enjoy the things I used to love and maybe pick up some new ones.

    I aim to crochet a temperature blanket, an afghan is way too ambitious for a beginner like myself so I want to start off small. For those of you who don’t know what a temperature blanket is, it’s a blanket where you crochet a row or two in the color that represents the temperature of that specific day, the aim is to have a row or two for every day of the year and you’ll have a unique and interesting blanket with many colors. If I was living back home in the Virgin Islands I’d no doubt have a blanket with maybe just two colors for the whole year but since I’m living in France with its changing seasons I’ll have so many colors, I think I want to add in a little break so I know when the months change, a line of white or something and possibly a heart applique for February since it will be Valentines and my birthday.

    Other than the temperature blanket I want to write more, this year has been terrible for my writing and I’m kind of ashamed of this, I also want to pick up my camera more, there is nothing around me that captures my interest but maybe I can start doing animal photography more since it’s more linked to nature than an old building is.

    Well, I have a pie to bake, Christmas parties and the such which I am not looking forward to…

    Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, I wish you all have a joyous time and if you suffer from Depression like me I hope you find something that’s worth holding on to.

  • Feeling inspired to write more

    Bonjour à tous!

    When in France right?

    For the past two days, I have been inspired to revisit an old story I started working on about two years ago. All my interest in it had fizzled and it just sat there stagnant until Thursday when I was going through my old stuff and saw it. Immediately I felt this need to dust it off and breathe some new life into it. It’s not finished by any means, you can say that it is barely begun so I won’t have a lot of work to dissect and can just start writing whenever I feel like it. I tried to remember just why I never began my story and why it was put into a coma and the only thing I could think of was that I didn’t have the voice to tell it. I firmly believe that if you haven’t connected with your storyline on a deep level it will never get anywhere. A forced storyline is never a good thing and if you have to force it why are you writing it in the first place?

    I read over my files, I keep very detailed records of my storylines whether it’s in old notebooks or digital notebooks on Evernote or Google Docs. I have literally hundreds of half-built worlds and storylines, finished short stories that need good editing. What I do not have is the desire to do what I know needs to be done. It has been so hard for me to push through my depression and get back to what I have always enjoyed but this month I feel like I will be able to accomplish much.

    I do a bit of poetry and have some works in progress on Wattpad that I have been focusing on lately. If you’re interested and registered on the site you can view my profile here at LLDove.

    My pieces are anything but popular but I feel like they fall into very specific niches and they are special to me especially Tales of an Introverted Expat and The Silence Inside Me, both are poetry-based and reference my depression, anxiety, and selective mutism to an extent.

    The piece I am working on now can be typed as a Romantic Comedy, it is called One Night Romeo.

    Gia Joseph was tired of the small town she grew up in where everyone knew her as the recluse, she wanted a fresh start somewhere new and exciting. It was cliche to move to France with the hopes of finding love but what Gia found was an unforgettable one-nightstand. She couldn’t get this guy out of her head and against her better judgment began looking for him hoping that he was looking for her too. The problem with finding someone in a big city is that it’s nearly impossible to run into the same person twice, somehow fate intervened and Gia found her one night Romeo, unfortunately, he didn’t remember who she was!


    Gia spends the entire summer manufacturing coincidental meet-ups with the hopes of reminding her Romeo of who she was and why he should be more than a one night Romeo

    One Night Romeo

    I can’t say when it will be finished but I do plan on working on it until I am satisfied with it.