 Good morning, and welcome to the new year, beautiful people. I am super excited for today's Q&A video. I've never done one of these before. And so I asked you guys what questions you would have, if any, about my life, or anything related, but really just anything. And you guys had so many awesome questions. So I am gonna be answering these as I go about my day today, technically it's New Year's Eve right now. But you know, still. And so I'm gonna answer your questions as I run some errands and do some other stuff. So come along with me and let me fill you in on the answers to all your ponderings and wonderings. All right guys, you're balancing on my dashboard. That's safe enough for my little camera, right? Right? All right, let's get going. All right, it's cold and it looks out there. Are there any hidden perks of being an amputee? Yes, yes there are guys. I'm not gonna lie, having a handicap parking is all right. I'm not mad about it. I've had it before recovering from ankle surgeries and whatnot. It's always been temporary now. It's obviously kind of permanent. I would never overuse it. Like if I was ever having a day where my ankle didn't hurt, I'd obviously park in a normal parking spot. But I'll tell you what, movie theaters, you know how you always have to park like way in the back and you can never get a spot up close? That problem has been solved. Just kidding guys, like for real though, it is very, very handy to have handicapped parking. So I drove for the first time a couple days ago with my husband just to kind of like test it out very short distance and felt fine doing it. Cause I actually learned to drive with my left foot cause I was having surgeries on my right foot when I was in high school as well, learning to drive. So I'm really comfortable driving that way and it felt fine. So I'm just driving with my left foot and kind of tucking my carbon fiber rocket foot, Christopher Walken, that's his name by the way, for those of you who are asking if I've named my prosthetic leg, yes I have. I kind of just tuck my prosthetic leg under my normal leg and drive that way. A lot of people asked if we're thinking about having kids. The honest answer is probably not. I like kids, I used to be a nanny, but we don't necessarily want them for ourselves. Obviously you cannot plan for everything. I do have, as you know, other health issues which would kind of complicate things, but you know what, if it happens, it happens, but we are not planning on that nor do we really want kids. We have thought about fostering definitely cause there are a lot of kids out there who need homes who don't have them and we definitely have a house. So that is a possibility for the future, but as far as actually having our own kids, chances are we're not going to and you know, I'm sure I would adjust to being a mom, but I have never felt a need to be one, if that makes sense. Favorite cookie recipe, white chocolate macadamia nut. Hands down, every time, amazing. And no one asked this, but my favorite cake is red velvet, amazing guys, it's so good. All right, now we're gonna head over to Walgreens and drop off my prescriptions. All right, we made it successfully to Walgreens. It's much colder, much windier, and much slippery out. And I'm waiting for my prescription to be picked up. So let's go through a few more questions. Do I still get phantom leg pain? Yes, definitely yes, but it is so much better than it was before, which I am insanely grateful for. I'm off all the medication for it. I was on Gabapentin, which is a nerve pain medication and I decided to come off of that a couple of weeks ago cause I didn't really think it was necessarily helping and it had been getting better. So I was kind of crossing my fingers and hoping for the best. I still have nights where I can't really sleep because of it. It feels like there's like electricity hooked up to the bottom of my ghost foot that doesn't exist anymore. And I still feel it all the time. Like I'm wiggling my toes right now, but they don't exist guys, which is just odd. So I still have phantom sensation pretty much all the time, but the pain is a lot better. How did I meet my husband? How did I meet Brian? So we actually, I like our story a lot. I mean, probably every couple likes their story, but I think we have a cool one. I started training mixed martial arts fighting, like cage fighting, UFC, that kind of stuff. When I was 20, yeah, 20, so seven years ago and trained for about a year and went up to a Jiu-Jitsu tournament just to watch. I went with my gym and there was a super cute guy I hadn't seen before. I remember kind of like staring across the Jiu-Jitsu tournament and being like, is he with us? And I guess he kind of noticed me too and we started talking and just made me laugh a lot and we started talking over Facebook and messaging back and forth. He lived in New York, he was just visiting and happened to visit my gym. Long story short, three weeks later after we talked constantly back and forth, he drove across the country in 26 hours to take me out on a date and then two weeks after that he moved to Colorado and we dated ever since with some slight bumps and then got engaged three years after that and have been married three years since. So our relationship was built on a lot of MMA fighting and Jiu-Jitsu, which is not usual for couples but it has been so cool having similar interests and being able to like bond over that. We still do Jiu-Jitsu together. I had to stop MMA because of the Kiarima formation like the brain condition, the migraines, all of that. I couldn't get hit anymore but I could still do Jiu-Jitsu because it's submission based if you know anything about the sport. So that's what I still do. I can't do it right now. I have to wait until at least April to try it out again because it takes at least six months for the bones in your leg to heal after there's been an amputation. So six to 12 months. I'm hoping I can get back in April but we'll see how it goes. How have my fur babies been with my new leg and the pain that I'm in? Okay, so I thought they might be weird about the leg. They have like barely noticed it. They sniffed it, that was it. They have been really attentive with the pain though. I noticed especially the cats because they've been around the cats a lot because the dogs still aren't home. I'm still in too much pressure pain. Like if there's pressure on my leg, it hurts. So with the dogs jumping, we decided it was best to wait another week but the cats will definitely like on bad nights, bad days, they'll curl up on me and just start purring because they're the sweetest little things and I think they know that I'm hurting. So they're really good about that. Like animals are, we don't deserve animal guys. They're like way too good for us humans. Ooh, where are my dogs and how old are they? So my dogs have been with my parents since surgery, which has been way, way, way too long. It's been two and a half months now. They are up in the forest. My parents have like 30 minutes from where my husband and I live and they live on five acres. So the dogs are not suffering being with them right now. They're frolicking around the forest, having a great time because they've been doing nothing but running and jumping and playing. Sadie, who is the oldest is seven and a half. She's the big shepherd. Monkey is the second oldest. She's the little, she's Brindle. She's like the cat of the leopard looking dog. She is also seven, but she's a little bit younger. And then my little Sophie is a year and a half. She's turning two in March. She's the youngest shepherd. What are some New Year's resolutions I have? Okay, so I do not have any. I know most people do. There are many years where I put resolutions down and I've never kept like any of them. And I found that it was more discouraging thing for me than anything. So what I really do more than anything is kind of just think about who I want to continue to try to be throughout the rest of the year. I don't know, I'm always making goals. It's not really a year long thing for me. It's more, I just reassess all the time because I'm a very introspective kind of person. And so I've been thinking lately that I really need to focus more on like journaling and art and things like that because they really help me like stay in touch with myself and not box away emotions and pretend like nothing's wrong and like I'm fine and everything's okay when it's not. What are my favorite sports to play and watch? I kind of answered that, but I love watching the UFC because I fought MMA for two years and I still do Jiu Jitsu. I don't really watch any other sports. I'm kind of lame like that. Like I live in Broncos country and I can't stand football. And I'm kind of really grateful that my husband is not like a sports guy either. I mean like he is a sports guy and he's like super athletic and we is insanely good at Jiu Jitsu. But neither one of us really like watching anything other than fighting because we're weird like that. So what are a few of the things that have been unexpected surprises, good or bad? This is probably one of the biggest things that is a daily hassle that I haven't tackled yet that I didn't really expect. I knew that clothes would be a little bit different in the aftermath of losing leg. I didn't expect them to be quite this difficult and I thought instead of describing it to you I would just let you watch. The pictures here are stretchy, oversized leggings. This should be very simple, right? You think it'd be the simplest thing ever, right? Wrong! Skinny jeans pretty much all the time in Colorado even work clothes. It's kind of appropriate to wear nice skinny jeans and like a nice top. That is completely out of my wardrobe because they will not fit over my leg. At least at this point because my carbon fiber rocket ankle will not point down. You have to get any pants over this curve and if the opening is small, that's not gonna happen. So I've tried it many different ways. I've tried putting the leg on and trying to get my pants on that way. That doesn't work so well. So I try it this way and I wear pretty much only leggings now or shorts or sweat pants or super loose jeans. But I need to figure out something better for when I go back to work. So I could switch to dresses. That's not super my style but hey, I could rock it if that's what needs to happen. So pants are probably one of the biggest surprises. What is this squashed purple pink object by me? You may ask, well, this is Marshmallow. Marshmallow is an adorable present that was given to me and then Brian squashed by sleeping on him too much. So we just kind of squish him back together. Okay guys, it's a couple of days later. I'm back at home. I decided not to change out of PJ bottoms today because PJs are better than real clothes. I think we all know that. I wanted to continue answering some of your questions as I take my nail polish off because I'm tired of it. Have I considered getting a running leg? Oh my gosh, yes. And I literally cannot wait until I'm able to. You can't, you're not really supposed to get a running blade or running leg for like one to two years because you just have to do a lot of modifications, I think, one of the biggest concerns with it. So I have to wait a little while and it's super, super expensive. Now, I know that there are some grant programs out there that I might be able to qualify for so I'll definitely be looking into that but rest assured, one day somehow you will see running for the first time on this channel and I can't wait. I actually haven't been able to run since I was 12 and broke my leg in the first place and I didn't do a lot of running then because I was not an active kid so I have not been able to run my entire adult life and I cannot tell you how excited it makes me to think about the prospect of actually running again. Whatever happened with the length issue with my leg? Okay, so it never actually got resolved. My leg is too long, it will always be too long unless I have surgery again, which I'm not going to do. So essentially it's going to always be a small issue but they were able to work around it. I was able to get the leg that I wanted but they did have to make modifications. Like there's usually a flexible inside part of your carbon fiber leg. They, I don't have that. I have about that much of it at the top to provide some padding so the sharp edges of the carbon fiber aren't digging into my skin but usually they have it all the way through so that like for instance, now that the swelling has gone down in my leg, there's a piece of my bone right here that really like digs into the carbon fiber. Usually they would just shave out the flexible part and I'd be good to go. They can't do that because that would add too much length to the leg and so they have to make do by like sticking fabric pieces in different parts and trying to get it right and we haven't figured it out yet. So it does continue to complicate things but I was able to get the leg that I wanted and we just have to kind of hopefully make it work. We may have to do a whole new socket way sooner than expected which would be a bummer but we'll just see what happens with it. We're kind of just playing it by ear and waiting and seeing. If I could travel anywhere in the world, where would it be? I'm going to Ireland in the next couple months which I'm super excited about. This trip has been planned for a really long time with my best friend and her husband and my husband and well before surgery was scheduled and so I thought I would have two legs going to Ireland and I will, except one of them is now made out of metal. So that has been a dream place for me for a long time. I am looking for a visiting next to lakes and drawing and maybe doing some fishing. I don't know. I'm super excited to visit that country. I think it will be incredible. Aside from Ireland, London, I think I'd really like to go to. I've always been a huge fan of Japanese history. Weirdly enough, don't ask me a lot. I was homeschooled so I was into like, you know, all kinds of crazy stuff. So those are some places I definitely, definitely like to check out in the near future. Ooh, that brings up another topic. I was homeschooled. Now, before you judge me like crazy, I mean, feel free to go ahead and judge me like crazy. Most people do for being homeschooled. I was homeschooled until 16 and then I went to a charter school that essentially let me go to college at that point. Being homeschooled was a weird experience. If you're interested in knowing more about that, I will be happy to do a full video on it, but my parents did it in a way that I really appreciated. We were always super engaged with a lot of other people who were homeschooled and not homeschooled. I would take classes at like schools. I would take classes with other homeschooled kids. I'd be involved in sports in the area. So I was never like just hold up at home all alone. However, I did learn how to sew. I did keep chickens. I did a lot of the classic homeschooled things and I was a very awkward child. So there's that. What kind of faith do I have? A lot of people have asked me this question. Obviously, I think it's a really good one. Like I said, I was homeschooled and like a lot of homeschooled kids were raised super Christian, pretty conservative Christian. When I was 20, a lot of really, really bad stuff happened and the super conservative Christian good homeschooled girl who believed the world was a beautiful safe place was shattered and my faith was really called into question and broke. I kind of had to reestablish everything. So the last seven years have been me trying to figure out what the heck I believe. Do I even think that there is a God? I've come to the conclusion that yes, I do believe that there's a God out there and that there's a loving God out there and I think Jesus is pretty cool but that's all I have figured out. I don't really, we don't really go to church. It's a, because of trauma that I have associated with it, it's a very difficult place for me to be but faith is something that's really important to me and I work on trying to find. It's just a challenge like it is for many people. So it's definitely a part of my life but it's a very challenging part of my life and I wouldn't say that I have any religion but I absolutely have faith in God. I think I'll paint my nails to match the little marshmallow over here. Do I ever forget my leg and go to kick up something? Yes, like often, that happened last night. I went to like playfully kick at Brian when he was on the couch over here and well, I don't need to fill you in on the details but that didn't happen because I don't have a foot. What shows have I been enjoying lately? So I stayed up last night watching Homecoming on Amazon Prime. Interesting show, it's a little bit creepy. One thing you should know about me is I'm a total wimp. Like I can't do scary shows, movies, anything like that. So it's like a little on the suspense edge which I'm okay with. It's pretty good, I like it. I've also been watching Law and Order SVU for the 900th time because I'm obsessed with that show. Olivia Benson is my best friend. Marisha Gehargity, if you ever watch this, if you ever sent me a message, I would die but I would die a very happy person. My go-to favorites are the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Parks and Rec, and The Office. Like hands down every time, those always work for me. What do I do for work? So I work full time, not on YouTube, this is something I do totally on the side right now. I started my own business a couple years ago and started doing that full time about a year ago. It's gone very well, I'm super grateful and blessed to be able to work for myself. It's definitely been a blessing and a curse working for myself and having the surgery. I haven't had to like get approved time off or anything like that but at the same time, I support myself, like it's my business, no one's paying anything for me. So I think it's gonna be rough getting back into it when I go back to work in a couple weeks because I'm kind of starting from scratch. Like obviously I have a lot of leads, I have a lot of clients but it's going to be, I've not been doing anything for a couple weeks and it's the kind of business where you really have to be working all the time to make money. So it'll be a lot of work getting back into it but that's how it works and I'm okay with that. All right guys, so that this video does not go on forever, I'm gonna go ahead and end it there. I would love to answer more questions so let me know in the comment section if you have any other questions about me, my life, amputation, anything like that. I am for the most part an open book and would love to chat with you guys. So let me know what you thought of this Q and A video and what additional questions you have. I look forward to seeing you guys in the next video and again, happy new year. I hope that the beginning of your year is starting off beautifully and wonderfully and I look forward to seeing you all year long. Thanks guys.