Tomorrow is June!

Tomorrow is the first day of June which is important to me for a few reasons.

Now, yes, there’s lot of awareness months every single month, and all of them matter.  Everybody wants people to not be sick anymore and that’s a very important thing to want for people even if you do not know them.

But I know my big brother Josh and he has a very rare disease that’s called Myasthenia Gravis.  He’s had it since he was a little boy, and sometimes Myasthenia Gravis makes him have to go to the children’s hospital in the big city to get treated because our local hospital can’t do what needs to get done for him sometimes.  That’s why when June comes around every year, I put even more effort into telling people what Myasthenia Gravis is.

 

There’s this chapter book called “Fantastic Things” that’s the first book of its kind:  It’s the first junior reader chapter book that explains MG (that’s short for Myasthenia Gravis) in a way that kids and teens and adults can understand, and it’s all about me and my brother Josh. There’s lots of superly great information in that book that explains some of the things people with MG go through every single day, and plus, it’s not a scary story. It’s a real story with real facts and plus suggestions of how to help someone with MG (they don’t just have to be a kid either because it’s information about anyone with MG) when they need help.

So please remember that June is Myasthenia Awareness Month, and let people know about this superly rare disease not because it’s superly rare, but because if people know about MG and they know how sometimes it can mess with somebody that has MG, they will be able to help that person.  That would be a very excellent thing for someone to do for someone they maybe don’t even know yet that has Myasthenia Gravis.

This is where you can buy a copy of “Fantastic Things” from Amazon in lots of different countries:

Amazon US
https://www.amazon.com/Fantastic-Things-Missy-Barrett-Chapter/dp/1523642564

Amazon UK
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1523642564

Amazon Canada
https://www.amazon.ca/Fantastic-Things-Elyse-Bruce/dp/1523642564

Amazon France
https://www.amazon.fr/Fantastic-Things-Elyse-Bruce/dp/1523642564

Amazon Germany
https://www.amazon.de/Fantastic-Things-Missy-Barrett-Chapter/dp/1523642564

Amazon Spain
https://www.amazon.es/Fantastic-Things-Missy-Barrett-Chapter/dp/1523642564

Amazon Mexico
https://www.amazon.com.mx/Fantastic-Things-Elyse-Bruce/dp/1523642564

Amazon Japan
https://www.amazon.co.jp/Fantastic-Things-Missy-Barrett-Chapter/dp/1523642564

Business As Usual

Just because everybody is in Phase Two of re-opening everything doesn’t mean I don’t do neat stuff every day at my house because I do and so do my brothers and so does my mom.  I still talk to my Grandma and Grandpa Barrett a lot, and I still talk to my Grandma and Grandpa Two Rivers a lot, too.  So basically it’s just business as usual in the Jenna Barrett household (that’s my mom’s name:  Jenna Barrett).

Today I’ve been working on the four p‘s and the two r’s of getting my mom to agree with me on doing something I really want to do.  If you don’t know what the four p’s are, that’s patience, persistence, politeness, and presentation.  If you don’t know what the two r’s are, that’s research and resourcefulness.

Here’s the thing:  I want to go on a vacation this summer, and I want to go someplace great that my family never visited yet, and I already know where that is:  Paris!

Before you guys say, “Hey, Missy, Paris is very, very, very far away from East Tennessee,” I already know that the Paris in France is very far away, but also, I know Paris in France is not the only Paris in the world.  I did a lot of research and I found some superly neat other places also named Paris.  There’s a Paris in Michigan and a Paris in Texas and also a Paris in Ontario (that’s in Canada).  I also happen to know there’s a Paris in Tennessee.  Paris is in Henry County, and last year, Henry County proclaimed August 30th to be International Missy Barrett Day:  A Day to Do Good Deeds in all of Henry County, so that tells me the people of Henry County are very caring people for sure.

So I did some research on the other Paris places I found but I did the most on Paris, TN because that’s the Paris I wanted to go to the most in the first place.  I found out it’s been around for over 200 years so that makes it a superly historical location I definitely need to visit with my family members.  One thing I found out with all that research I did was that the town was supposed to be named Lafayette after a French General that helped the Americans during the American Revolution, but his name was pretty hard to spell right so they decided to name it after someplace close to where he probably lived which was in France and that’s how Paris got named Paris instead of Lafayette.  I love that story!

Also, back then, they had a courthouse and in one end of the courthouse, that’s where they did all the legal stuff with a judge and all that.  At the other end of the courthouse, there was this guy from Paris, and he sold homemade pies and also liquor.  I watch detective movies sometimes (okay, a lot of times because when I grow up I’m going to be a undercover private eye supersleuth detective) and sometimes the people in the movies ask if the lawyer passed the bar. It’s kind of funny when you think about the old-fashioned courthouse back in the day because I guess you could say that lawyers that defended people in Paris back  in the early 1820s passed the bar before they got to the courthouse, and then passed the bar (because of the liquor) when they got to the courthouse.

I love puns!  And plus, you can learn lots of real history about Paris on their website by clicking HERE.

Anyway, they have museums and parks and lots of great stuff people need to see for themselves, and that’s how come I put together a presentation.  I worked hard on this, and I even phoned my Grandpa Barrett so I could read my presentation to him.  He said it sounded very good, and he didn’t even have any suggestions about other stuff that maybe could be in my presentation.   That’s good because if my Grandpa Barrett doesn’t think anything is missing, probably all of my mom’s questions are going to get answered by me before she even gets to ask them.