About Me

“Don’t try to paint your masterpiece under artificial light.”
- The Pretenders, “I Hurt You,” Isle of View, 1995

Left to Right: Heaven and Hell

My name is Christy.  That should have been fairly obvious by now.  I primarily put this site together so my spread-out family could keep track of me but they’re happy to share.  I’m a webmaster (see some of my sites below), drummer, attempted musician, music freak and wrestling fanatic.

In 2010, after spending three years watching my mother die of ALS and experiencing the hell that goes with it, and eight or nine months of intense grief, I started growing into a happier (and more sane) person, and the journey ranges from entertaining and enlightening to confusing and downright hilarious.

I’m a pretty laid back chick and I love to laugh, though I have very little patience for people who go on rants about how wonderful they are and then treat everyone like dirt.  Sort of like “methinks you doth proclaim too much.”

My favorite pastime

Music and Such

I turned my former garage (which for a while was my bedroom) into a pseudo-studio where I like to record demos I wish other people would sing.  You can find some on the Music page or on my ReverbNation profile.

My main influences and inspirations are Heart, Lita Ford, Doro Pesch, The Judds, Susan Marshall, Ginger Doss, Big Bad Gina and Betty Blowtorch, but I also love to jam to Crucified Barbara, Halestorm, Xandria, After Forever, Trisha Yearwood, Dolly Parton, Vixen, Nightwish, Within Temptation, most 80s glam bands and a whole lot more.

On The Interwebs, Writing and Other Such Things

I have a Journalism degree that I use in interesting ways (in other words, not the way my mother thought I would) and came up as a webmaster through first a Vixen fan site, then as Lita Ford’s official webmaster, as co-admin of TheRunaways.com (until August ’08) and a variety of other sites.  After my mother’s ALS diagnosis my activities cooled a lot but I still enjoy whipping up a website every now and then. I currently administer the web presence for The Goddess Festival.

Under a pen name, I’m also writing a book called Like Dark Minds. You can follow my progress on that at my author site, ChristySummerland.com.

Right Back To Basics

I love my friends, my pets (click here to see them), my extended family and all the people who’ve been there for me through a lot of changes in the last couple years. And that’s essentially as much of me as I care to write down here.  If you want to know me better you’ll have to work at it.  That’s part of the fun. 

1. “Stranger to my Soul” – The Mother Station
2. “Side of the Road” – Lucinda Williams
3. “Four Directions” – Ginger Doss

Everything else falls in after that with rapidly-changing positions. The top three had to earn their spots as songs I can never ever get tired of and have some sort of emotional or inspirational significance.

Promolife
The Goddess Festival
Jori Costello
Big Bad Gina
Arkansas Yoga Center
The Confused Shop
Far Infrared Answers
Promolife Blog

I’ve got five kids that I adore (and trust me, they often act like children). In order from oldest to youngest:

Hijinx is the elder statesman, my golden Siamese tabby cat. He also goes by the names Jinky, Jinx, Forrest Gump, Silly Butt, Golden Man, Hysamajinky, Janky and Mama’s Man, among others. He was named after the Heart song from Dog and Butterfly.

Roxy was one of two kittens a mama cat left for us. This black cat showed up one day and I found three kittens that she wouldn’t let me near. A while later she had four under a neighbor’s storage building, and brought them to ME to feed. They were already wild and no one knows what became of them. Next she had Roxy and Cougar behind my back fence and came and fetched me when they were only a couple weeks old. We got thoroughly attached and Mama Cat stayed around a few more weeks and then sort of just gave the kittens to me. Another while later she was pregnant again and calmly scratched on my front door and walked into my house. I had to take her to the pound then because we had no room for more cats, but at least she’s not filling the world with kittens. Last I heard she was living on a farm.

Anyway, Cougar is a late love, but Roxy still rules the roost. She accepts no nicknames except for Princess, believes that she owns my house, and my chair, and my couch, and my bed, and is offended that I don’t follow her around all day holding a food bowl. But at the same time she has a super loud purr and loves to be loved. She was named after Roxy Petrucci, former Vixen drummer.

Lorado is my Labrador/Border Collie mutt. I found her in the Wal-Mart parking lot. She had three ugly brothers so I thought, I can play with ugly pups and not get attached. Duh. Once I was over there this one little ball of yellow fur ran out from under a truck and put a paw on my foot. She came home immediately. You can imagine my poor mother’s surprise. My tendency to grab up strays is something I inherited from my paternal grandmother, and sometimes mom really wished I hadn’t. She wasn’t named after anything; the name just sort of came to me when we drove home.

Buddy was supposed to be a small pal for Lorado when I was busy a lot. They told me he was half Corgie and probably wouldn’t be very big. What they didn’t tell me was that the other half was some sort of shepherd and some sort of husky-type dog. The only Corgie in this dog is his eyes. He’s now bigger than Lorado, but after an awkward growing stage, I now love him just as much. Even if he is a big old goofy mutt. I would never have named him Buddy; his foster parents did. But after racking my brain for a name it occurred to me that he IS my buddy. So Buddy he remains although I usually call him Butters.

Stormer is the baby and she knows it. She loves it. She was an orchard kitten in Washington state, whose mother was killed. My “other dad,” Sue, went to her mother’s house one day to find that her brother John (RIP, Stormer will always love her uncie John) had been able to rescue this one kitten. The others had died of starvation and not being able to pee. Sue figured out how to get her to go to the bathroom and bottle fed her for several weeks, until I showed up. We bonded immediately. Stormer ended up driving back to Arkansas with mom and I in the van, and has been my constant companion ever since. There’s never been another cat quite like her. She’s named after a member of The Misfits from the 80s cartoon show, Jem.