Full Time Mermaid

[AniaR]

Here's a clip telling mermaid myths at multifest

[AniaR]

Just filed paper work to expand the business and own Canadian Mermaids country wide. That way Atlantic Mermaids and Halifax mermaids will be divisions. While filing we got to see all the other businesses using mermaid in their name ( Canada wide) and we are the only actual mermaids. Neat

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

[Mermaid Lorelei]

That's awesome. Kind of cool to be the only ones.

[Mermaid Galene]

Congrats, Raina!

[AniaR]

well at least country wide none of the other mermaids are registered. I am waiting to see the list for each province, but I wouldnt be surprised if most of the other canadian mermaids aren't actually registered businesses. (which works out if they wanna eventually work for me haha)

[AniaR]

woowhoo everything went through! announcement:

Proud to announce Sean and I are the official registered owners of Canadian Mermaids!! This is the country wide version of our company of which Atlantic Mermaids and Halifax Mermaids are divisions ( with more coming as we expand). It is our goal to recreate the success of Halifax Mermaids across the country by mentoring other Canadian mermaids and enabling them to entertain and educate others. As a mermaid agency we hope to book mermaids across our home and native land and continue to raise the bar in mermaid entertainment and creative environmental education. It has been an awesome journey so far and I'd like to thank Terry Norman of our board of directors for helping to facilitate this process. Thank you to our current mermaids Mimi, Nessie, and Naida for helping build this opportunity and for all their hard work spreading joy and education and for their valuable input that has seen Halifax Mermaids grow in leaps and bounds. Thank you to all our business mentors too. This is going to be a Splash!!

[Josephine Boone]

Congratulations!

[Mermaid Galene]

Very exciting! Congrats, Raina!

[AniaR]

*sigh* I have a huge day today and I got all of 3 hours of sleep. Not for lack of trying. #1 we're having an issue with heat. We get two hot months out of a whole year so no one buys air conditioners, it's a waste of money when we have to spend so much money on heat 10 months of the year. But that usually means a few days out of the year where it's just too hot no matter how many fans get going. Last night was awful. I tried keeping my window open but we live right by the highway and between the noise and the second hand cig smoke it just couldnt work. so I did my best with 3 fans but my sciatic nerve pain hit an all time high (have no idea what triggered it) and no matter how I moved my leg hurt from the heel all the way to my lower back it was awful. I took a bit of a freak out at 2:30am because I was so tired last time I checked my clock in vain was 5am and I got up for good at 8am. We have a huuuuuge day ahead of us. multiple gigs, travelling all over, and then I am fitting in family time in the evening for an early Canada Day celebration. (I've had to miss the last few family things due to bookings so I reallllly gotta try and make this one). I already feel so sick from not sleeping

Sometimes I think I have the stupidest business model ever. Hey, let's take that lady who gets chronic pain and cant sleep very well and make her move around a lot, and let's make the whole business depend on how well she can move! lol.

I've got Sean with me, and I know he'll be extra supportive. I also tend to get an adrenaline boost. Im sure during my second gig since it's in the ocean I'll get more than an adrenaline boost hahah it's usually not to warm this time of year. Fins crossed I can tolerate it because last weekend was so cold my hands physically hurt. I always think when I say yes to these types of gigs it'll be warm enough and it never is lol

#mermaid problems

but I am thankful for work, and on Monday I will get my back cracked, and if I'm lucky the pain will go away. I learned that I likely have endo tissue right on my nerve and that's why it keeps flaring up I had to stop the lyrica because I felt it did nothing and the side effects were insane, plus I just couldn't afford it on top of everything else.

Yesterday Mermaid Nessie graduated so I am sitting here waiting for her to arrive so I can give her a cute mermaid gift, and I've got one for Mermaid Naida whose birthday is on Tuesday too. The girls plus Mimi will be doing a gig without me on Tuesday while I travel to montreal

[AniaR]

Also this image of mine went viral: http://imgur.com/0pc56WX

It's showing up all over:

http://cruisingoutpost.com/2014/06/m...k-broadside-3/

https://redditjs.com/r/pics/comments...round_on_land/

http://9gag.com/gag/a2NeY8w#comment (gotta love all the nasty comments)

http://izismile.com/2014/06/23/daily...0_pics-65.html

http://ramblingbog.wordpress.com/201...round-on-land/

[Aziara]

http://maxiocio.net/ytdetail.php?id=NUhs_1puHk0 You could make one of these super cheap redneck AC units- all you need is a 5 gallon bucket with a lid, a fan, a box cutter, a drill, and a few 2 liter bottles with frozen water in them. It would probably cool at least the bedroom if you close up the room.

[Ariel-Starfish]

Those comments! :angry:

[AniaR]

Okay so recap for the last few days.

Friday I did a daycare surprise visit. A woman who saw me at Multifest ended up knowing Sean's Dad and Stepmom, and invited me to visit her daughter's daycare. She is from Germany and is going back there today, so they wanted it to be a surprise visit as as a present to the daycare. I don't have any pics because of privacy reasons but it was really fun. I keep daycare bookings short. 30-45 minutes because it's really hard for kids to sit that young for that long no matter how engaged they are. I had the support of about 5 staff. And indeed, even though the kids were interested, they were standing up to go to the bathroom, one little one tried to strip haha, yelling out loads of questions, sitting nicely and then randomly jumping up and down haha. Merwrangler Sean was with me. I have a lot of experiences with daycare, but he doesnt with that age group. One of the things he learned: if you give the kids a choice, they'll make the one you don't want! Hahaha.

Anyway it was all pretty cute and fun.

As I mentioned earlier Friday night was an awful sleep but I made it through. While I was typing my post yesterday Sean was picking up Nessie to drop her off at a booking. Then he and I drove 100kms out of the city to our first booking. Just an outdoor pool party. When we got there, we took my tail out and ahhh the dorsal fin had totally snapped off at the knees, and was ripped off all the way up about 8 inches!!! Some might recall my dorsal fin had always been fine until at merfest a careless mermaid literally threw herself across my tail and her body weight pulled it at a funny angle and it started to rip off. I'd had it for a year at that point and never had any problems. But because the rip is right behind the knee- it's not a weak spot for whenever I bend!

So heart attack mode for sure. But there was nothing at the moment we could do, I just had to do the gig. I was fully in the water for most of it and the kids were little, so no one even noticed. When we finished we had to drive another 30minutes to get to the next booking. So we pulled into a hardware store and Sean ran and bought fishing line and needles. Obviously no form of silicone or glue would work to keep it together or at least prevent more damage for the next gig, but we had to do something. So Sean, in the blistering heat, pulled out the tail in a parkinglot and went to work trying to sew it! It was very difficult and he had to use pliers to get the needle through, and the needles kept snapping. But eventually he got the whole thing sewed back on and gosh darn it if he did it so well you could only tell if you knew beforehand.

We arrived to our next gig with barely enough time though because of how long it took. These kids were on a lake and the clients had paid to have me swim for 2 hours. That's a long time of constant swimming for a small groups of kids, lol. So I hopped off a dock way up the lake and started swimming to them. It took about 5 minutes which doesn't sound long but 1) I couldnt really safely put my head under because there were many large rocks and the water was black. Meaning not able to see a darn thing. Then 2. a speed boat went by and combined with the wind the waves got to be huge, and I didn't want to get slammed across rocks. so I took my time and paced myself but it was a wee bit intense. The lake would go from deep enough that I couldnt touch anything, to my tail scraping bottom suddenly. Eventually I got there and put on a little act about finding the party, haha but I was pretty tired.

The beach was really rocky, and it tore up my arms and parts of my tail. I work so hard to be careful with my tail, but she's just about 3 years old, super thin, and at the end of her lifespan. I dont think there's any other silicone tail out there that has been used for as long and as for frequently aside from Linden's (and her artists lives nearby and was able to do touch up frequently). Im sad to know I'll have to retire her soon, but wont miss the stress LOL.

The gig was fine but it was really long. I don't normally book that much swimming in those situations. Informal stuff I don't mind because you don't have to be "on" all the time, but stuff like this where you have to be constantly entertaining is tricky. I was giving rides, pushing them around on floaties, swimming constantly, and I was exhausted to start. but I got through. The kids were really sweet and appreciative and well behaved. When I was done Sean hauled me up a huge hill to the client's ice cream store where I was given free ice cream haha. We also swam near a few boats (small) to freak people out hahaha.

After that we grabbed Nessie from her gig, all came home and got washed and changed, then we went off for family time which was much needed. I got home last night and Sean created the perfect cross breeze in my room. We googled sleep positions for sciatica and I piled the pillows up and got myself in a good way. Downloaded a white noise ap to block out the traffic, and I got a good solid 10 hours so I feel much better today. Leg is still in a lot of pain, but I've got Chiro on Monday

Picture time!










See: he did such a good job you couldnt even tell!












New gym shirt

[Cordelia]

Yay! Prince Charming to the rescue. Glad everything worked out okay. Also, totally cute Ariel shirt!

[AniaR]

Updates!

Got a new article in the paper but dont have a digital copy :/



Canada Day
















My image went viral on Lady Gaga's fan site!!





Got this wicked shirt from Lady Gaga









The Queen

[Mermaid Ellowyn]

How exciting! It looks like you had a blast. I love the baby mers on their laps, too, how adorable

[AniaR]

So it's been a good couple of days. I am finishing up all my end of book stuff. It'll be in other people's hands after this upcoming week. I am meeting with the photographer in a week too to go over the cover. Eeep it all happens so fast and then slow and then fast again! I had a fun little easy gig today after we were hit by Hurricane Arthur yesterday and without power in many places.




I wanted to touch base about my facebook ad experience. I had mentioned how the add worked great in the beginning, a steady reasonable amount of clicks and new fans. However I have been reading into it and it seems even the legit advertising platforms are now exploiting a bit. How most of the ad platforms work is that you pay your fee and your ad is in rotation until a) it gets a certain number of clicks or b) you select a time frame. I went for the clicks. I could get up to 5000 clicks. That doesn't mean 5000 fans. Just that the ad would rotate until it had been clicked on 5000. I had it for 7 days and it was doing well. Exactly on the 8th day by page likes jumped an enormous amount and the add 'expired'. When I looked at my anaylitics it was clear they used fake accounts to to expire my add so it wouldnt run as long. Thus encouraging me to pay more money for adds. ughs.

Anyway, since then I have been weeding out the fake accounts and facebook obviously flagged them too. I dropped over 3000 fans and am still losing them daily- all fake/spam accounts. It kinda sucks but I felt much better when I saw my popular city go back to Halifax and my 'reach' go back to normal. Fake accounts make your reach freaking plummet. No one sees your stuff because FB only shows it to the inactive accounts. So real people arent looking and checking facebook so no reach. LIterally in the day I gained the big jump my reach was like "5 people saw this post" and no likes. LOL.

I am still researching better ways to advertise with facebook but I started a facebook group specifically for the Halifax Mermaids. I also use my Raina mer page. I find these both working much much better than my fan page. My fanpage that has 17,000 fans? I can post a pic and it's exciting if it breaks 50 likes. ON my Raina Mer page it breaks 100 easily. I also found better ways to embed search tags on our website and blogs, and it's paying off fast. (I totally suggest digging around the advanced settings of your websites!)

You can catch up on our blog here: http://halifaxmermaids.weebly.com/blog on that main page is just excerpts you have to click the "read more" to read more

This week is my Dad's Birthday. I also have a few gigs and a special swim with a summer camp that I am really looking forward to. I am hoping to do an underwater shoot with my splash tail before it gets retired soon and we're looking at setting up a backdrop and doing it in my parents temporary pool. It's deep but not very big. I wont be able to swim but I can certainly pose for some pics.

Beyond that it's just paper work paper work and more paperwork and spending money. lol.

[AniaR]

I am crashing! Thought I'd post another update quickly before bed zzZZZzz

Today I auditioned Mermaid Mutiny She just joined FB so be sure to go give her a like. I put her in my sequin tail we bought from Mermaid Bonnie. GIRL WAS A NATURAL HOLY COW. I already did the interview portion and this was the swim portion. We had so much fun and she is so so so good and that tail looked so so so good

Pictures


















































We also got a few photos of me while we were at it







Videos





The underwater footage I have is amazing and is the only thing that really does the tail justice. It's still rendering and I'll post later

Today I witnessed a violent altercation while in my mermaid tail. I was teaching a mermaid the ropes and we were at a local park in a swimming hole. We had an audience of about 20 young teens (junior high age) and about 10 random adults with kids. The 20 teens had all arrived together and were pretty roudy from the start. They were blocking the path and I realized pretty quickly they were egging each other on to fight. They started cursing and making threats. They were above me on a rocky ledge, while I was below in the water. It was quite the height drop. At that point I hauled myself up on the lower rocks and insisted in my best teacher voice that they move along. This was a provincial park, there were kids all around them and more coming, and they didn't need to be subjected to violence or swearing. The kids got lippy with me, and I got lippy right back which they didn't expect. Then they started throwing punches. So right sitting there in the water, I took the phone and called the police. They took off pretty fast after that.

To them- they were just a bunch of kids, carrying on and egging on a fight between two people. The two people messed each other up pretty bad. But what they werent thinking about- was how easy it would be for any of them to bump the bystanders, the children, the other adults. Or for someone to slip and fall off that ledge in the heat of the moment. They were putting themselves and everyone around them at risk - especially the little kids. It takes one stupid choice or accident to cost someone their life- especially in a place like that.

There were all these bystanders and no one spoke up but the girl sitting in the mermaid costume in the water. Mob mentality is a funny thing. People get scared, people want to mind their own business. But when you see violence and bullying- never underestimate the power of your words and actions! You don't have to get in the middle of it like I did- but making a phone call to the police or security can safe someone's life. I couldn't stop them from wailing on each other but I made sure no one else got hurt or involved. If the 10 adults who were there even took a step forward, or joined me in my verbal interactions with them, those kids may of took off before anyone got hurt.

Never be afraid to stand up for what is right. It can be scary but there are strength in numbers, and if you're too worried to do it yourself, call the police.

The police were awesome by the way, and got a kick out of my costume


Off to bed now. Im at a summer camp in the morning swimming in the chilly ocean!

[Mermaid Enora]

you're such an inspiration to everyone!

[AniaR]

the underwater video